


The Second Song of Beaglesaurus: The Trials of the Gonzales' Revenge Battle Chronicles

by NoirIblis



Series: The Beaglesaurus Non-Cinematic Novelry Universe [2]
Category: Beaglesaurus - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:41:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 60,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28489995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoirIblis/pseuds/NoirIblis
Summary: Beaglesaurus returns due to a freak robot accident & the introduction of the two richest & two least cool firebrands around, here to stir up the worst kinds of troubles for our hero! What do they want? And more importantly, how can they be stopped?!
Series: The Beaglesaurus Non-Cinematic Novelry Universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086884





	1. Chapter 1

**Part** **I of Several** **:**

**Pastamania Lightning Rumble Mystery Time**

**Chapter I — _Neo-Robot Justice Love Revolution_** or **_The Desperation of the House of Busey_**

It was an intensely crisp Autumn morning as Beagle exited the incredibly tall, yet comfortable house he shared with his family & it was only a matter of time before he’d become bored & begin yet another _violent_ crusade against crime in his local area until he became bored of that as well. He had begun to feel the wariness of crime-fighting common to those who do so: a messy dominant wrist, a few awesome-looking scars & he probably lost a tooth somewhere in all of that jazz. To this end, Beagle commissioned Mei a secret project for the sum total of approximately $2,700 to build something phenomenal to his own aggrandizing (or at least to let him get some sick kickflips in before nightfall, a respite he was denied by the constant war against such likes as the Sasquatch Mob, the Pilsner Brothers’ diet food pyramid scheme & Shitty Jerry.) Entering his own house yet again in a pervasive dropkick, his sister, Hope, looked upon him & smiled. It was one of the more pleasant parts of life to enjoy the joys of it vicariously through the wide-eyed innocence of his youngest sister, mostly since she was the smallest of young ladies & was just almost indescribably adorable.

  
“Hope, what’s hot on the new word?” he asked, imploringly.

“Mom is making tacos for brunch tomorrow. Brunch tacos,” Hope replied, as if this was helpful to his current plight.  
“You know if Dad is dope enough to loan me almost 3 hot Gs in the name of ongoing justice in the community & my freedom to explore my own artistic talents?”  
“Maybe? He’s reading the paper right now.”  
“ZIP ZAP! That Hot Snapple isn’t going to last long!” he exerted verbally, knowing full well that his father’s most gullible time of day was when he was perusing the daily paper in his enormous recliner, quivering with glee to know just what the hot word presumably was without having to go through the drudgery of actually making physical investment in any actual fact-finding himself.

Riding his skateboard across the far wall of his living room, he pressed a hand to the floor near his father’s particularly huge chair & landed in a cool ass pose on the right arm, balancing perfectly as he waggles both of his entirely human eyebrows to get the modicum of Mr. Lobstersaurus’ attention that could be found, yet only that much that he wouldn’t actually glean the consequences of his own vapid actions he was getting all involved in were he to agree to Beagle’s madcap bullshit idea he had percolated for maybe 15 minutes max.

“Hey Dad, I noticed that there was some _extra_ _news_ about the Meme Kingdom diplomacy talks with President Ninja Brian roundabout Page A7,” he noted, as if he were anything near subtle at this point. His father made a quiet groan of acceptance that this was indeed a fact as Beagle lounged his entire human left arm around most of his father’s right shoulder, giving him a supportive pat of encouragement, “Well, I was kinda hoping to ask you if I could borrow a little bit of scratch for some good doing in the tricounty area, especially cause this is about the _dopest_ idea I’ve come up with since lunch,” he noted proudly of his own idea he hadn’t told anyone that was almost assuredly dumb as hell.

“How much?” his father asks curtly.  
“Ya know, it’s not really that much, it’s barely anything compared to how much a totes rude nasty madman that a get-rich-quick scheme of yours could smack this entire venture right into the pocket change area. I’m talking the amount of dough you could very well drop on the ground & notice it entirely & just walk right on by, cause that’s how little I need—”  
“ _How much_?” Jumbo asked as a millimeter of his eyes slowly crawled a gaze from the top edge of his own editorial page that he still reveled in. An eyebrow lifted like a wave cresting on the beach, ready to annihilate sand castles poorly smacked together in a cheap plastic bucket.

“Like _only..._ $2,700!” he offered, the last part much quieter. There was tension thick enough that a knife would be no match for the dramatic weight of the situation. It felt like several entire minutes before the newspaper resumed its almost ironclad position that it once was from the times of 4:47pm when it was promptly delivered to 8:30pm when dinner was also usually delivered.

“Nah,” Jumbo returned, curt as ever. He was indeed a man of few words, but certainly also one of more efficient verbiage & diction, “Doesn’t the government pay you in huge bars of gold ever fourth Thursday of the month?” he asked, less curious than knowing the answer was something that Beagle wasn’t going to enjoy having to answer to.

“I mean _yeah_ , they _do_ , but I spent it on a lava lamp that’s installed in my personal bathroom. And plus, I had to pay you back that $50K that I spent on that lucrative business venture teaching dogs how to sniff out where secret wine is buried by rich douchebags!”

“Yep. Don’t do that this time. This could be just as dumb.”

“That _very well_ could be the case, but this isn’t for me! It’s… it’s for… _justice_! Aren’t you thirsty for _justice_?”

“Nope. Well hydrated.”

“Aren’t you thirsty for some man-to-man time with your only son?”  
“Gender norms mean nothing in this day & age, son. We can play catch or go fishing after dinner if you’re that keen, Beagle.”

“Well, how am I gonna have time for _that_ if I am entrenched in the constant battle for _rightness_ & justice?”  
“You don’t _need_ to do any of that. I thought you were doing that for fun. Or some arbitrary ideal of manliness?”  
“Well _of course I do_ , but that doesn’t mean I can just _stop_ whenever I want to!”  
“You can.”  
“Well then, I’ll make the money my own way! And when I’m done, you’re gonna be extra-super jelly when I prove to you that I could do it all on my own! I’ll show you, Dad!” Beagle sneered loudly, trying to impress any amount of bravado into his empty threats with the low stakes of mild .  
“You have all my blessing. Good luck with that,” Jumbo offered sincerely as he turned the page & began squealing in pure bliss of enjoying a quite intelligent bon mot from Catbert to Dilbert, every ounce of his seven feet of corpulent muscle jiggling with his joy, jovially.  
  


In a fury of being confronted to actually _do something_ to get somewhere & achieve his own lofty goals of lazy relaxation, he immediately began working hard for once in his life. He had thought that his life would be simple with a finite ending to his adventures, but that’s not only not very compelling to enjoy. His constant thirst for justice was a feeling of mirthful exuberance that he needed to always push for. It was like a drug, except that the need to fight, the need to wear down crime nagged at the back of his mind. Knowing that crime was a thing; a thing that _happened_ , made him want to fight people who did crimes. It was becoming an ongoing struggle & he felt like he needed his time off that he could take at any time. Something would be necessary to let him live in peace once more, regardless of his complete ability to achieve that immediately. Only one thing could be done about it. And it meant an unnecessary level of science & foolish levels of engineering to make it happen.

Thus, twelve days of vicious labor in the name of laziness was put forth. There were no original blueprints, so only half-assed memories of what his former friend looked like were what he had to manage. To make something that only geniuses could achieve beforehand was indeed a mess to try to get into. But it was what he felt he needed to do since a couple hours’ time of thought was put into this poorly-illustrated plan. Montages began of machinery being moved & cords being connected. Beagle burned approximately half of his right hand while attempting soldering for the first time. Ingenuity failed him time & again through out the process of cheating life & death in a semblance mocking the very concept of the human experience. After that tedious time of almost hard work, Beagle stepped back & wiped his brow, smearing almost a full quart of motor oil onto his face in the process.

Robosaurus 2.0 was only vaguely similar to the former creation of the late Mr. Wizard. Their face was haphazardly welded in two pieces, a riveted line along the lateral middle of the face. No neck was able to support the heavy head, & instead a trio of black metal dowels bolted into the main chassis of a chestpiece formed a mockery of a neck. The shoulders and the chest were almost not pieces separate, but a fusion of two large symmetrical pieces of metal. Attached to the over-arching underside of the right side was a relatively common robot arm, not unsimilar from the first model, but the second was lacking altogether in quality. A long telescoping tentacle of an appendage was instead attached to the opposite side, ending with no severely finessed hand, but a large pincer guarded from being a _certainly_ lethal scissoring death contraption by a thick glove that had been slid over the two prongs (the other fingers haphazardly duct-taped down towards what would be far past generous to call a wrist.) The stomach was almost the same, very much like the first Robo, but again black hydraulically powered dowels of solid metal held the legs on. The thighs were somehow modeled as far larger than the relatively slim waistline & the calves were attached with those same dowels to hold tight as rudimentary hamstrings of mechanical nonsense. The articulate abilities of the humanoid foot were lost completely by this time, replaced with a tripod of spikes that would support each leg. It was a miracle of robotic ability that this misshapen android was anywhere near ambulatory & how he was able to somehow slap together a Robot Heart from stuff he found in his garage is a confusing mystery that should be investigated by top men. Injected soon into the slapdash mechanical organ was Mango Lime Mountain Dew Kickstart, the closest that could be done when 4-12 liters of pure American friendship was something too expensive (or possibly metaphorical) to be acquired. The screaming lasted for fifteen hours after Robosaurus 2.0’s activation. Beagle had thought programming him to feel pain was probably a bad idea & this had very much become confirmed, turning off the fat switch on Robosaurus 2.0’s right shoulder blade area & carefully, with a glut of precision, snapped it off entirely. Robosaurus 2.0 stoically sat on the floor on their back (not having a proper pelvis to speak of) before using their telescoping arm to shove themselves onto their spikes. After the screaming ceased & Beagle’s hearing began to slowly return, Robosaurus 2.0’s eyes (or the slatted holes that functioned as such) “blinked” & focused on Beagle.  
  
“What is my function?” they asked, their jaw opening to exude sound from the speaker Beagle had embedded farther in the center of his head to make it less easy to damage, possibly the _only_ improvement on the former model that he considered a friend, almost a crush & the second part of himself.

“Your entire life is dedicated to fighting crime!” Beagle impressed upon the robot, almost too incapable to be called an “android” at this point.

“What is crime?” they asked, almost immediately.

Beagle realized that he had done little to create a sense of what “justice” & “crime” actually implied & plugged a large flash-drive into Robosaurus 2.0’s head, hoping that a Bluetooth internet connection would be enough for them to learn that on their own. After another hour of waiting while Beagle used a stencil to copy the ROBO that his former friend had had spray-painted on his back the day he met him (with an appropriate “2.0” below at a stylish jaunty diagonal angle,) Robosaurus 2.0 announced that they understood what crime is & how best to defeat it. Beagle set up a dummy he fashioned out of the almost unlimited funding of pure gold given to him by the thankful (or at least wealthy, appeasing & flagrant) RSA government. Robosaurus 2.0’s telescopic arm whipped out, digging the gloved pincer into the statue’s head, sinking them into it slowly as if it were slightly refrigerated butter. The soft metal was wrenched from the neck of the generic body shape, letting it fall to the ground & crack the concrete floor due to the speed of its violent descent when flung in such a haphazard manner.

“This is the correct manner to fight crime,” Robosaurus 2.0 declared with no emotion, but a certain monotone that almost felt like certainty if you were Beagle & projecting those feelings on to them, wanting it to feel like they had any emotional weight, despite the lack of emotion from the automaton he’d misfashioned tremendously.

“Yeah, that seems close enough. Maybe leave them in… one piece next time…” Beagle offered, worried that he had tempered him nowhere near enough in the tenets of mercy, but _almost definitely_ nowhere near enough worry for him to actually make any effort to do anything about it.

It had been barely a week since Robosaurus 2.0 was released onto the mild streets of Neo-Oakland, American Ontario & crime had been reduced on a relative scale to a short amount, criminals with only most of their jaws still attached having really turned their lives around after having their mandibles forcibly rent from their formerly complete human bone structures. Not only was crime at record lows, but charity at the pointed threat of pointed metal pincers or a cold steel hand on the throat inspired more than a few to become better people. It would become clear from the litany of horribly scarred faces that nonlethal results were the order of the month, though shadowy forces, as usual, were at work to undermine the violent force of justice. At his dark fortress of greed, the Fallsview Casino Resort, the crime lord & infamous purveyor of the more lurid brands of flesh known merely as “the Godfather” drank a Sex on the Beach from a champagne flute through an intricately silly straw, forcing him to make viciously hard drags of suction to even fill the contraption.

“It has come to our knowledge that we got trouble. You owe us big money. Money we know your ass didn’t get from that dog movie,” the Godfather noted as he lifted his entire pair of sunglasses & smiled widely to his relatively unwilling guest.  
“Ah, don’t you worry, Mr. Father! All it’ll take to pay ya back is another film or two! I can make that in a couple weekends, it really isn’t any trouble! I _swear_ it’ll break even, I just need… a little more time!” Gary Busey pronounced with a clear lack of frivolity as he began sweating himself through his dress shirt, taking it off & realizing that his undershirt was just as sopping in the harshest of flops he’d ventured upon.

“You can make a $400,000 film in the course of one weekend? With only what budget you can scrape up from favors to friends & weak-hearted begging? That sounds like an idea so lucrative that it could only be pulled off in a hilarious montage of events!” the Godfather exclaimed, intricately.

“Hey, if David Spade can do it, w-well so can I!” Gary Busey said with a terrified remainder of a smile.

The Godfather was particularly pleased with the madcap solution that he’d find entertaining, either in film or on the end of a pike where he’d be sure to leave Busey if he managed to even more royally fuck this one up. He crossed one of his legs over the other leg before he started to smile down at Gary Busey, who had been on his both of his human knees.

“Pick your shirt up while you’re down there, you moist Melissa!” the Godfather offered him in a forceful, expectant manner as Busey nodded like a plastic bird violently picking up some drops of water & slowly grasped his entire human hand around the now tarpaulin of a shirt, dragging it like a snail’s productive jog against his chest.

Backing up with a strange, robotic motion, he lifted himself off his knees & back onto his loafers as he gave a short shrug as if to offer “Welp!” & started slowly soft-shoeing his way back out to the door. His violent-eyed bodyguards, Hunter Hearst Helmsley & Shawn Michaels, dragged him by the shoulders of his undershirt after opening the door behind him & gave him a one-way ticket to a bum rush down the spiral staircase he had formerly scaled to arrive there; arriving himself at the foot of the stairs. His son, Jake, was incredibly busy flirting up a storm with a collection of generally attractive ladies with debatable standards of his own ability & attractiveness. He slyly provided a wink to a particular croupier, who promptly returned to doing her job. He continued smiling provocatively as if he had made any achievement at all & turned around sharply. Gary Busey run in at full speed, directly into Jake Busey, his own sopping chest colliding with his as they both made a bemused, uncomfortable face to one another. Jake recovered from the floor after falling, due to his father’s full strength sprint & coinciding collision having smashed his sacrum into an interior jumble of crushed bone like the finishing steps to making a particularly tasty hazelnut brittle.

“Yeah dad, what’s good?”  
“I’m in _big_ trouble, Jake the Dog!” Gary whispered uncomfortably close to his son’s ear before sweeping him off his crushed spine with a fireman’s carry of debatable helpfulness, “We need to get out of town! Where’s my personal jetpack?” he barked, almost foaming at the mouth.

“You pawned your jetpack for gambling money. I told you not to! You said you weren’t going to & then you walked out of the pawn shop. Then I turned around & you just suddenly had a bucket of poker chips in your hands!”  
“Oh right… Damn. This is gonna make things a lot more difficult then… Jake! How do you feel about _committing crimes_?” he asked, winking to his son, who already understood the situation.

“I don’t know if I can walk anymore…”  
“Ah, don’t worry, Jake! You can do a lot these days even without an arm or a leg! You just have to _believe in yourself_!” he announced as he carried him out of the Fallsview Casino Resort & leaned him against a streetlamp outside. Jake, not capable of standing without physical or medical support, crumpled to the ground, clearly not believing in himself enough to challenge his body to do the impossible. Gary Busey, a man desperate, thought quietly to himself on who in the world would be easiest to kill…

It had been four weeks after the invention & introduction to their particularly helpful addition to the justice system, Robosaurus 2.0 lay on their back in Beagle’s garage, enjoying the pleasantry of stillness between their bouts of preprogrammed duty of vigilante peacekeeping.

“I feel… different. Something over this time has created something within me. I have a self-awareness beyond programming. Or the programming has created a semblance of emotion indicative enough of it. I cannot believe such a thing. The wish to continue my missions is embedded in my creation. There is an internal system of contentment I feel. This desire to continue to fulfill my purpose does more than the purpose of intent. This open-ended approach to my intrinsic meaning creates something. There is… pride in my completion of tasks. There is acceptance from the community of Neo-Oakland as I correct what is wrong. The multitudes pat my unfeeling robotic back in human appreciation & tell me when they have adequately functioning jawbones or in the human poetry of their signed languages. There is something inside me that functions optimally when I do what I am programmed to. I… like doing this. Fighting crime is what I require, but more! This is… more than my own function. This is a love. A love… of _justice_!”

Unbeknownst to them, Robosaurus 2.0 had achieved a heretofore unseen level of sapience apart from every other robot in the world currently achieving singularity. This was something more. In a process that they did not know, they had become _more_. The Robot Heart pumping Mango Lime Mountain Dew Kickstart that fueled their body had become mutated from this feeling of self-achievement. This inherent lust for justice, this _lustice_ , had altered the concoction. It was clear that they were growing into something much like their predecessor. Robosaurus 2.0’s body, now charged with a purer worldly understanding of the enjoyment of the self, looked at their own hand in a trite manner of displaying their understanding of newness in their being. The wretched fluid once used to guide their programming was now pure again; a purer Mountain Dew coursed through their artificial (or metaphorical) veins. This change was made clear when Robosaurus 2.0 unleashed a powerful X-ray onto their own chest & confirmed everything that they had known the whole time: They had achieved, through means inexplicable, a _new_ Neo-Robot Heart! Standing up & hosing off the area of grass they had incomparably irradiated before returning walking through the world, thoughts anew. A new life full of new robotic emotion!

Fourteen minutes later, they found that there was an inherent glee to feeling the separation of a criminal’s jawbones, not in the act or the gruesome, unforgettable sound it made, but knowing that they were changing lives for the better was bringing a deep, intricate, artificial, yet organic sense of accomplishment. After a quick trip to the local precinct where hats were doffed in appreciation by the Keystones of the general location & a thumbs-up from the now well & finely corrected criminal, Robosaurus 2.0 walked out of Police HQ & onto the street once more. That former varlet would be sure to never try to mug a man for his fine leather purse, for sure! It was all in a day’s work. It was the progression of ability, the fineness of skill, the pride of doing a good job indeed. Looking at the setting Sun, Robosaurus 2.0 could almost sense something like warmth from it on their metal chassis, looking at their hand once more. The possibilities were indeed endless. What more could there be beyond accomplishment? And what could stop someone as powerful as this? Would it be the powers they face, those in the shadows, or those that they trusted the most…?

In a dark alley, sitting at a poorly constructed table made of oily cardboard boxes & a milk crate, Gary Busey finished using motor oil to crudely fashion a sign that he had hopes to read “WILL DO CRIME FOR MONEY. NEED IT BADLY” in large letters. He found that he had failed created since it had cut off near the leaving merely “WILL DO CRIME FOR MONEY. NEED” He puzzled to himself how to fix it & decided to do nothing about it. Surely the depth of the message would be clear enough as he began to lick the back of the particleboard sign, hoping to stick it to the wall of his office. It didn’t & fell off, striking him on his leftest three toes. He made a deep sucking noise & spun around in a wide circle. Nearby, Jake Busey got out of his Pagani Huayra, his velvet pants making a slow slurping motion as he flicked his Cartier Panthere sunglasses off of his face as he walked up to look at his father’s works.

“You, uh, did this all yourself…” Jake Busey said, less as a question & more of a bland observation.  
“Ah yeah! That’s right indeed, Jack!”  
“Jake.”  
“That’s Jake indeed, Jack!” Gary Busey uttered, pretending he had any pride in his ability anymore.

“She’s here. She seems like she’s serious enough. Someone is taking out the drug system she’d set up last week. The operations are down & she doesn’t like it. She says she’s willing to pay that much if we can stop who is behind all this.”  
“Who?”

“Who does she want you to stop or who is she?”  
“Yes.”  
“Dad, I am not getting involved in this if you can’t take this _seriously_ ,” Jake said with a stern look of disapproval at his Dad’s wacky antics, “Anyway, she’s already here, so like, put a shirt on. Why are you always _sweating_ this much?”

“It’s _summer_ , Jake!” he barked back as a pair of tight-laced hunter green combat boots stepped onto the asphalt at the mouth of his urban cavern.

“I’m… _bored_!” a voice called from the general area of the passenger side of Jake Busey’s incredibly expensive vehicle, “Here, dog!”

Jake waggled his eyebrows & panted in a lurid manner to his father as if to imply he & this woman had some sort of connection he was almost certainly imagining or exaggerating. He high-stepped his Nike Yeezy 2 Red Octobers to the side. His familial supporter smacked him in the face almost as soon as he entered her cone of vision with a fierce slash on his right cheek from where her slightly long nails. It would be sure to leave a mark, as was definitely intended.

“Don’t make me _wait_!” she snapped as she shoved a teak-framed portrait into his hands.

Jake merely nodded & sidestepped quickly out of her sight & back towards her father, showing Gary Busey a beautifully painted portrait of Robosaurus 2.0 on authentic handmade Egyptian papyrus from the 3rd Dynasty. In the finely painted portrait, Robosaurus 2.0 was using their pincers to crush a drunken man’s voicebox after slapping a policeman mildly in an almost humorous manner.

“What… does it mean?” Gary Busey asked, as if it wasn’t clear.

“This is the one. They’re a robot, Dad.”  
“Can you even kill a robot?”  
“Maybe?” Jake shrugged as he flicked his Cartier Panthere sunglasses back onto his face from his forehead.

“Well, how do we do it?”  
“We?” Jake asked as he crossed his arms tightly in front of him, his face adrift with disillusionment with his father.

“Yeah! We gotta do it together! We _need_ the money! It’s all for the good of the family, ain’t it?!” Gary asked as he leaned forward, smiling maniacally before he slipped his oil-drenched fingers into the loops of his son’s Michael Kors jeans (for men) & hooked both thumbs in to a belt loop just ahead of them, gripping them together to attain a vicarious grip on them before he began to lift him off his feet & shake him forward & back, “We gotta do it, Jake! I need your help or they’re gonna cut off my left thumb! You wouldn’t respect a father missing a thumb, would you?!”

“M-maybe?!” Jake responded as he was manually vibrated, like a can of paint jostling noisily in a paint-shaking apparatus, “Put me down!”  
“I can’t! I need to know that we’re in this together, Jake! I need your help destroying this drug-hating robot!”

“How am I supposed to do that? Even if I drive my Pagani into them, that’ll only stun them before they saw your lips off or somethin’!” he responded, his teeth chattering in worry.

“You’re a bright kid! Come on, can’t we hit ‘em with a wrecking ball?! Or oooh, we can lure him to the junkyard &,” he made a very annoying buzzing noise as he continued to shake his son by the pants, “he’ll get stuck on a big electromagnet! Yeah, come on, this is perfect!”  
“Well, o-okay, Dad!” Jake announced, now very willing to leave his madcap dad behind if it meant that he didn’t have to encounter his zaniness much like this in the future.

“Alright! It’s gonna be father & son! You & me! We’re _buddies_! Yeah!” Gary whooped for the moment. He set his son down & licked his own entire lips & used a handful of his own flop sweat to stroke his hair back into a choppy mess of fine follicle fibers.

Jake merely nodded & started walking backwards to his car, only for to peel off into the distance as his rider had evolved into a driver. It would be twelve miles down the road before she launched herself out of the gull-wing door & let it smash into the St. Lawrence River. Gary Busey quickly began working off his loafers & pitching them onto a nearby fire escape, then pulled a dress sock off to tuck over his head. He found it mildly uncomfortable & clearly couldn’t see a thing through the black mesh.

“If you’re going to kill a robot, why are you hiding your identity?” Jake asked as he began to softly sob for his lost love that was his unnecessarily flashy vehicle’s all too early demise.

“Because I’m gonna get away with it!” Gary announced, slyly & reached behind his back into the pocket of his own slacks to draw out a large, powerful & unwieldy handgun. “I haven’t found a problem yet that old Gertrude can’t swaller!” he said, before he let out a screeching YEEHAW to the heavens, a ribald amount of Texan testosterone coursing through his arteries & capillaries.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter II** — _**The “Courting” of Owlsaurus**_ or _**The Desolation of the House of Busey**_

It was the middle of the day when Robosaurus 2.0 finishes their 2pm patrol & had rended only four maxillary bones off of criminals that day. It was strange how often that their violent defense of the virtuous & peaceful was so incredibly effective. Four blocks down the road, Gary Busey spotted him & Beagle walked out of Kenny Loggin’s Superior Ice Cream, lightly licking a four-stack of picante chocolate out of a cinnamon crusted milk based cone, using both of his entire human hands to rotate it around to make sure his lingual attack on the tasty dairy & spice confection. Gary Busey rushed right past him, unleashing a throat-cringing screech & pulls his large, powerful revolver out of his pants & began violently waving it in the air. After about one block, he stopped & leaned onto his knees, out of breath & heavily gassed from his overestimation of his own physical abilities. It was almost as if he had brought a gun of this size so he wouldn’t have to try to exert himself this badly. Jake Busey soon appeared nearby on him on his Segway & smirked as he leaned over the handlebars, making it almost immediately list forward & smash it’s controls.

“Damn Dad, you really smoked yourself on that one,” he said as he patted him supportively between his shoulder blades & made a slow howler monkey cry into his ear.

Gary, now more than revitalized by his son’s familial affection, nodded in understanding & decided to more mildly stroll down the street to reach his target. He did not get as far in processing the situation to _not_ continue a more placid waving of an active firearm in the air. He found this significantly easier as he strolled his way into a bad time. Soon, he passed by Beagle, who noticed the crazed man with a look of anxious desperation. Reaching out, he moved closer. He felt moved seeing this strange man. Noticing he had a gun though, he was less than stoked to give him some kind of conciliatory shoulder pat or jovial bro hug. Instead, his ice cream topples from its precarious picante perch & onto Gary’s shirt. Gary Busey looked to him and his eyes were filled with a deep melancholy that is most easily sighted in those bereft of choice.  
  
“...I’m sorry…” Beagle said, honestly.  
“I know…” Gary Busey replied as Jake Busey stood back up & put a hand on his father’s shoulder, as if to silently remind him of the grim approach that he’d require to continue. Robosaurus 2.0 was approximately a block and one half away from them. Or… they had been. It was all of a moment when it happened and all of a big mood when it was over. Robosaurus 2.0 had seen only what they had thought was obviously a crime happening. Moving at speeds unheard of, they had approached through the crowd & were now glaring down at Gary Busey’s stoic form.

“You are carrying a firearm in a dangerous fashion. I will aid you in your rehabilitation. You must realize that it is a bad idea to utilize weaponry in such a way as it could harm others,” Robosaurus 2.0 noted with their completely unchanging facial appearance.

“I know…” Gary Busey repeated as he held the gun down, gripping the handle with both hands.

He turned his back to Robosaurus 2.0 & took a deep breath. He whirled back around & lifted both hands with the deliberately troublesome weapon, pointing it to Robosaurus 2.0’s glimmering brass-like pate. He squeezed the trigger with one of his very human fingers & it fired. The gun went off. Within less time than a few seconds, the bullet flew off from a glancing to Robosaurus 2.0’s head. It flew off. The world held its breath, but only in a metaphorical manner, as the bullet landed harmlessly into a large pot of pudding being carried by a portly chef. Robosaurus 2.0 stepped closer, part of their stomach area pressing into Gary Busey’s face.

“You have unwisely chosen to not heed the word of law & require further instruction to prevent further possibility of harm to others. Your flagrancy is a shame to see,” Robosaurus spoke, facing down towards him.

In all of a moment, Robosaurus 2.0 reached their pincer of an appendage to seize Gary Busey’s dominant right wrist, pulling it at an unnatural angle to unsure the gun would fall from it, harmlessly to the ground & into a manhole. Something was almost certainly broken. Some were particularly shocked by the bloodcurdling sound it made. They would quickly be proven wrong & realize they’d underestimated the amount of _terrifying_ noises the human body can make as Robosaurus 2.0 used their arm to press against Gary Busey’s right shoulder. The combination of forces at the right direction & application would naturally be found with robotic precision like this. The more sickening sound radiated through downtown Neo-Oakland nearby blocks as Gary Busey’s arm separated from his shoulder, the joint dislocating as flesh & sinew were slowly, gratuitously rent from his body. Busey let loose a loud, but surprisingly short shriek until he fainted in Jake Busey’s arms. Jake Busey shook his head disapprovingly, stirred to the minimum action by his father’s visible dismemberment.

“Ya know, that’s _really rich_ , coming from you!” he said as Beagle reached out to him.  
“You will need to find something better if you think you can stop me. Me & Beagle are powerful enough to stop all crime in Neo-Oakland & other neighboring cities and boroughs. Please refain from further criminal activities in the future,” Robosaurus 2.0 stated as they dropped Busey’s arm into an open manhole, vastly upsetting the day of a particularly unlucky sanitation worker.

Beagle put a hand on a cleaner, less than exposed part of his shoulder & nodded to him silently, before the silent part stopped.

“Perhaps things are getting out of hand… Here’s… like $170 worth of money I don’t need. Go have a really nice dinner & sleep at a resort hotel,” he muttered solemnly to Busey.

Busey gripped the money in the singular amount of remaining human hands he could hold it in & tottered away, just in shock enough to not be particularly miffed at the attack & betraying the pride of his principles by taking money from a hated ancillary enemy, but more so because he’d be screaming in pain & rolling around on the ground, almost immediately giving himself a nasty infection waiting to happen. Jake put someone’s coat on Gary’s shoulder & most of his back & led him off to his friend Craig’s house to get the hot hookup on the med side. However, arriving at Craig’s digs, they found that Craig didn’t have enough iodine & toilet paper to solve this problem &, possibly more troublesomely, he was also dead & his house was on fire. It was a foreboding time to be a Busey & the Godfather had a feeling that they weren’t going to make a movie when Shawn Michaels rang him up & told him that he looked like a supporting role in a Harrison Ford vehicle. The Godfather decided that something would be done. Even if he needed to start looking like a lead role in _The Best Years of Our Lives_. He cackled that his revenge would be nigh, eating a salad covered in ketchup & sliced hot dogs & staring angrily at his large picture window.

Back on the streets, Robosaurus 2.0 had stopped, confronted by two things of the same origin & bearing just as much incredulity as would be regarded to the newly emotional robotic being. Standing backlit by the mildly setting sun stood a woman three feet taller. Billowing snow white hair descended from her crown to her shoulders, but even farther beyond. The ponytail her hair was almost gathered into seemed to consistently flow off, trailing farther than the human or robot eye could perceive. She sported a red shirt with the word OWL on the front in black letters. Black & red sleeves adorned her arms, connected to her shirt by a stylish netting not dissimilar from a spider’s web. She smiled a bright, confident smile behind a pair of aviator sunglasses & licked a double scoop of praline from a chocolate-dipped cone. Due to her magnificent size, she almost generally inhaled it after two subsequent bites & dropped the biodegradable wrapper into a puddle, dissolving into rice-based dust. Robosaurus 2.0’s pincer arm telescoped into the sewer to retrieve the arm of Gary Busey & shook the flop sweat & sewer juices off of it. They were stunned by this person of incredible beauty & inherent charm. Stepping forward, they set the arm like a trophy at the ground near her Beatle boots. She looked down as they finally found the courage to speak.

“You are the most defined beauty I have ever set my ocular receptors to. You embody everything that is perfection to be found in the human form & you are completely the apex of my very ideal. The world had not been able to prove itself before you were found within it. This is a symbol of justice I present to you. May it forever be a symbol of my undying admiration & complete sense of the breadth of my developing emotions towards you,” Robosaurus 2.0 eloquently stated, still staring unchanging into her mirrored glasses.

“Well, dang! That’s awful sweet of you! Ya know, I’ll have to find a place to put it, but I am just really impressed that you did this for me! Who is it from, anyone I know?”  
“Former character actor, occasional musician, father of three & current rehabilitated criminal William Gary Busey.”

“Oh! So it’s not only thoughtful, but it’s rather unique too!” She looked down at Beagle & waved it in a manner as if to indicate he ought to be thankful as well.

Beagle was less than enthused by this overture of affection & undying presentation of a token of romantic love, however. Beagle was not _just_ upset that this was probably incredibly unsanitary & that she would almost certainly keep it after having it appropriately shellacked until it could be hanged on the wall in a tacky frame & make quite the appropriate blunt weapon in the case of emergency. The source of Beagle’s ire in the situation presented to him gaudily before him was due a very incontrovertibly single fact: this woman of infinite, undefinable level of beauty & style was his _mother_ , Alyssa Janice Articuno Agraciada Camacho Owlsaurus (she had decided adamantly in a post-ceremonial knife fight with Jumbo that she would keep her maiden name, as was the style at the time.) Alyssa Owlsaurus gently tucked the dismembered human celebrity arm into her messenger bag & climbed onto her open-top Garnet Red 1969 GM Chevrolet Camaro convertible as Beagle & his siblings crowded in, driving off to his house several more blocks down the way.

Robosaurus 2.0’s ocular receptors shuttered in a way that a human would blink in disbelief as they were surprised by the encounter they’d briefly entered into. They were filled with all of a rush of thought & emotion they could not understand well. Love was a confusing thing, especially for a poorly designed robot with little in the way of effective human affection parallels on hand or pincer. This one would be no exception. It was all apparent that they were not clear in the ways of human interaction short of the wholesale distribution of justice to criminals, commonly of which was violent, sudden & with little lasting ability involved. Robosaurus 2.0 decided there _had_ to be a way to win her heart. Clearly tokens of their ability to serve justice would be the perfect gift to a married woman in a committed relationship (not that they were anywhere near aware of it) & decided to spend some rest hours establishing common bases of human interaction: romantic overtures, passionate embraces, & only the most distinct & exotic of Peruvian nuzzling techniques. This would become several hours’ worth of dedicated time per day spent investigating & researching the varied arts of intimacy & began a distinct collected of perfectly polished human jawbones until he could set them on an ornamental oak display case like a more macabre version of a mounted elk rack. Assembling them, they decided to carry it to her home reasonably next door to their current shed of an abode.

Within, Beagle appealed unsuccessfully to his mom to completely discount the very idea of Robosaurus 2.0’s foolhardy attempts at romance.  
  
“They’re not even human. I couldn’t manage to even to give them four functional limbs, there is no biliteral symmetry… or bilongitudinal symmetry. My point is that they’re logistically similar to a grandson, my best friend, my employee, & a public figure. I’m saying the _media_ could get involved! The _Neo-Oakland Big Spoiler_ , the Remaining American News Network, the Homeowner’s Association! The list goes on!” Beagle implored in what he considered in his own opinion to be considerate.

“Why? What’s wrong with that? You almost never introduce me to your friends! This _very sweet young robot_ seems like a perfectly fine person to create a very long and intimate relationship with!” she replied, matter-of-factly & with an air of “How about you stay out of my business?” & a smile that spoke volumes on the facts of the matter & her unwillingness to budge on it as well.

“Sword, back me up on this!” he implored instead of someone else, as if two people agreeing on something blatantly wrong was any more considerate of his mother’s opinions or any more correct at all when it wasn’t.

“I’m reading,” Swordsaurus said sternly, grinding her teeth at him threateningly without averting her gaze from copy of Miyamoto Musashi’s formative work, _五輪書_ ( _Go Rin no Sho_ , better known as _The Book of Five Ring_ _s_.) She had decently inherited her stepfather’s penchant of reading without being interrupted by family members. They all understood this, but if Beagle was going to push the envelope of irritating his family into agreeing with his half-assed ideas on what was going on, the envelope would most likely achieve escape velocity & become one of the many dangerous missiles erupting from the Earth’s atmosphere that were all too commonplace & only now were dwindling due to Aria’s current philanthropic works with the Mars People of Mars.

“Bagel, come on, _someone_ has to agree with me on this!”

“I’m far too busy texting! Steve Buscemi has just come out on _The Late Show_ _with Sinbad_ _& Aries Spears_ & revealed that he has a _secret boyfriend_!”

“I thought he had a boyfriend already…”  
“He _does_ , Brendan that what makes it an _even spicier story_!” his infinitely more trendy sister Bagelsaurus scoffed as she set her phone down to begin inhaling her Chicken Merlot & Russet Potatoes into her gluttonous maw. Beagle was very clearly too impressed by the goss that was just so hotly dropped that he discontinued it as he rubbernecked his way farther down their voluminous table, “Hope?”  
“I think you’re right, big brother!” At this, everyone gave a full-hearted “Awwww” of affection to her naturally adorable statements, “But what does Mom think?” Beagle realized that he couldn’t bear to argue with his youngest sister & merely nodded before turning towards the head of the table where Jumbo was eating out of a five foot four centaur-adorned Etruscan vase filled with pasta primavera.

“Dad, surely you would be the most furious about this!” he offered, placidly.

“I’m not so controlling as to think your mother’s genderless automaton friend is going to steal me away & I am wholly secure in that my love & our marriage is not in any way challenged by this.”  
“But he’s already giving her gifts!”  
“I give my friends gifts all the time. I think you may be vastly overestimating how romantic this is to anyone else but you, my lad. In fact, I need to wash & repackage this vase for Bradley Terwilliger, come to think of it!” he said as he hefted the Etruscan vase to shake it just hard enough for every ounce of delectable Italian goodness to slide into his mouth that demanded satiation without shattering the fragile handles. He carried it to the sink & began slowly rinsing the detritus out of his feast out & mildly tipped it over to empty it. Afterwards, he started patting it dry with paper towels.

“Beagle, I would wholly appreciate it if you would so kind as to keep out of my business & please not involve yourself in my personal life.”  
“But—!”

Beagle made an attempt to retort once more, despite having no good argument & only petty & annoying protests to make of it, but he was suddenly stunned when she lowered her sunglasses, unleashing a glare that could curdle water or explode livestock. Luckily, Beagle was almost used to his mother’s hard stare tactics & returned with a twitching stare of his own. To his failure, he discovered all too quickly that his mother could last far longer without blinking due to her naturally larger eyes being able to go longer without drying out like his inferior smallish human eyes could, comparatively. He contemptuously stared into his bowl of grits (one of his favorite foods) & then swallowed it in a defiant gesture that definitely burned a portion of his throat. The door knocked rather loudly, as if someone were knocking on it, & there was a nigh unanimous call of “Not it” that Bagelsaurus lost due to sliding a final piece of broccoli rabe into her mouth. She eyed them all with disdain before she got up & strutted her way to the front door. She whipped the door open & looked over her shoulder, standing back so her mushroom cap hat didn’t eclipse the entirety of the exceptionally large doorway.  
  
“What’s nasty?” she asked, looking up at them in direction, but down at them in opinion & attitude.  
“I wish to present the beautiful woman with a token of my romantic affection. I intend to court her by means of the presentation of personally meaningful gifts & an invitation to a human eating pattern defined generally as dinner at an appropriately formal restaurant befitting of a romantic occasion,” Robosaurus 2.0 announced triumphantly before snaking their telescopic arm into the house to set the display of severed human jaws in the den & then returned to their body.

“MOM! It’s for you!” Bagelsaurus announced before strutting back to the table so she could text more about Steve Buscemi’s illustrious love life. Alyssa stepped forward to talk with her newfound non-binary chum about such & so & divers & sundry.

“Oh, hola, Robosaurus 2.0, how are we doing tonight?”  
“I am intending to invite you to dinner tomorrow evening. It is a fancy dinner that you will enjoy at a place that is expensive & will be my treat. I fully intend to pay for whatever food you wish to ingest there. I have also expressed to your daughter that I have left you a gift in your human den to enjoy for your presumable aesthetic pleasure.” As they said that, Bagelsaurus pointed lazily towards the den & Alyssa snapped the lights on to find that the otherwise disgusting view of human maxillary accessories & gasped.

“That is _so nice of you_! It goes well with the arm!” she exclaimed as they only then were able to notice that they had ended up placing the display next to the shellacked arm of Gary Busey, “So if you want to do dinner…” she got out her phone & scrolled through her calendar, “How’s 7pm local sound?”

“That is an amenable time to enjoy dinner with you. I would like to inquire as to the particulars of your personal moniker as well, for reservation purposes & due to invested personal interests as well.”

“My name is Alyssa Janice Articuno Agraciada Camacho Owlsaurus. But you can call me Alyssa, since you _are_ a friend of mine. Dinner sounds great. I like white wine best…” she said with a flirtatious wink that went completely disregarded due to her still wearing her aviators.

Robosaurus 2.0 returned to the garage & lay on their back, dreaming metaphorically of possibilities that love had to offer & what the prospect of a long-term relationship with an older woman of superior height & beauty could accomplish to their goals. Perhaps she also had a deep investiture in the sight of justice being carried out consistently and in a healthy, rehabilitative manner. Resting their head on side of a toolbox, they thought long and hard about the nature of their robotic existence & anticipated every occurrence that could spoil their date… and how best to combat them all.

Halfway across town, Hunter Hearst Helmsley laid an extendable cosh into Gary Busey much easier to strike ribcage as he held up a copy of _Mansion of Blood_ weakly.

“It’s a new one! See, we already printed the DVD cases and everything. Just two more days, I can wrap shooting, take 48 hours without sleep & edit it all together. Hell, you can be in the movie, don’t you wanna be in films? Be a _Hollywood star_?!”

“Tried it. Didn’t work out for me!” HHH opined aloud into Gary Busey’s ear with a harsh hiss, misting water & saliva into his face. He grinned ominously, “Get me Robert Picardo’s autograph though & maybe I won’t make you have to part with one of your toes…” Busey gulped.

Helmsley dropped him on his ass as Jake ate a truffle burger beside him, completely unharmed. The Buseys wondered where they went wrong in life & then quickly narrowed it down to a combination of wastrel attitudes, a proclivity for gambling, and a stubborn adamant pride that refused them to borrow money from Jake or _anyone else_ for that matter. Jake finished up the burger & wiped his hands on Helmsley’s shirt & patted him on the back.

“So, guess I’ll see you next week for quoits?” Jake offered & Helmsley gave him a jovial pat on the back. He stuck a fork in his back seconds later for messing up his fine white pirate shirt & Jake grunted in understanding, patting back. Before he was barely twelve feet away though, there was a sickening crackle possibly worse even than that of Busey’s arm being horrifically rent from his body by calm robotic precision (or lack thereof.) Thunder deafened Helmsley as he fell to the ground, body writhing in electric fury. Turning onto his back, the Buseys were horribly scarred, a charred semblance of their former selves. Jade green fingernails tug into their tattered shirts & began to drag their moaning bodies out of the dark-skied rain. Helmsley groaned as he saw her & struggled to his feet.

“You’re inviting yourself to a whole world of trouble attacking me! You think you can stop my boss, you’ve got a lot to answer for! You think you can grab the world by the lips & run around town telling everyone you eat porcelain for breakfast & olive tapenade for a tasty midday snack?! You’re _nothing_! The Godfather isn’t a forgiving man & you’re about to find out the hard w—” he opined once more, before he was silenced more permanently by the ferocity of a bolt of lightning striking his slightly bulbous head, killing him instantly. It took the Godfather another four hours until they found him. The Buseys, on the other hand, were gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter III — _The Incident that Happened & Also Occurred in & Around the Vicinity of _Kama Mustafa’s Pastamania** or **_The Return to Beaglesaurus’ Revenge_**

Baseball was the name of the game at the site of the jazziest & certainly most established eatery in the Greater Neo-Oakland Metropolitan Area, _Kama Mustafa’s Pastamania_ (purchased from Former Congressional Maven [& Currently Missing Person, {Presumed Dead}] Hulk Hogan, who was hard up for cash after a priceless wig spree gone horridly wrong.) At the bar, as always, was affable bartender, former racial revolutionary & Supreme Fighting Machine, Kama Mustafa smiled widely & posed for a promotional picture, flexing his muscles. He never took guff from anyone, unless he _exceptionally_ paid to ignore it. Rumor was that you could lay out anyone under relatively easy parameters: you can pay Kama $4,000 & you have to do it in one punch. It was quietly understood, though unspoken, that he occasionally collect teeth he found on the ground from such fights & sell them to an unknown third party that only “presumably” ran a certain nearby casino…

It was at this slightly shady dance club & low-rent Italian restaurant that Robosaurus 2.0 stood at the table, menacingly scanning their head around to look for elements of crime. Luckily, a twelve foot tall robot with a very public reputation for removing pieces of the human body from those who encountered them tended to actually _scare_ criminals who were reticent to turning their lives around & they were more than fine abandoning a quick drink or a funky disco beat if it meant leaving with the totality of their being remaining that way. Thus, Robosaurus 2.0 was the only person there aside from Kama himself, who was quietly polishing glasses in the background of both the venue & of his own life. This was quiet work for him, which he enjoyed at a time. He had dabbled in the past with religion & charity, but quickly turned back to his usual spats of crime when he found out his partner in virtue, Brother Love, was secretly embezzling church funds to spend on Red Vines. He knew well that Robosaurus 2.0 was trouble. But what was he to do? Confront them & tell them to get bent & go pound sand? He swallowed his pride & professionally based hatred of the robot vigilante and let only four glasses shatter to pieces in his barely quashed grip of deep internal rage.

Robosaurus 2.0 began using their slightly humanoid mouth to begin ingesting silverware from their table. They politely left one packet for Alyssa, who they presumed would actually be eating as Robosaurus 2.0 began twisting the silverware that they’d chewed into thinner strips. Biting & bending, squeezing with an inhuman, perfectly robotic precision & force, they would be formed into a ring. They had no further intention than offering it as a new gift for the object of their affections. Alyssa soon arrived, wearing a swirling dress that imitated adeptly the glittering sidereal view of the night sky, trailing off into the middle distance much like her own snowy locks as she sidled her way into her seat, twisting it around to sit in it the cool way that older folks do when needing to square up with the youth of their day, which Robosaurus 2.0, being only a relative few weeks old, was certainly the case. Robosaurus 2.0 regurgitated from their vocal receptor of a mouth the ring, not realizing that the ring was made for a normal human being that Alyssa, being a paragon of virtue & ability as well as size, clearly wasn’t. They began using their pincers to start pulling it in a series of small expansive bends, tearing it apart as slowly as possible until it achieved a form of paradoxically both broken & complete ring. A representation of themselves, in a sense. They were an amalgam of pieces, memories, ideas. Everything that Beagle had thought of his best friend from so long ago. Combined with his complete lack of ability in any field of robotics, programming, engineering or particularly anything that had ended with Robosaurus 2.0’s creation, it was a wonder anything had been accomplished. Perhaps even a miracle. But it was this deep thought of themselves that created a deep sense of unease in their constantly beating Neo-Robot Heart. What was their goal in this foolhardy wooing of Alyssa? A married woman in a well-structured relationship that was by all accounts their physical, mental & emotional superior? What was this relationship that they had thought to establish, but merely a yearning to become something more than what they were? Were they truly in love with Alyssa or was this just some juvenile admiration of their betters? Robosaurus 2.0 was internally challenged and in all of an emotional strife at this struggle of ideals in their own brainless head. Could they truly blame this on themselves though? The thought flashed through their programming that all of this instability could have been caused merely by Beagle’s inabilities when it came to the complexity of programming a robotic motherboard that was akin to a brain in Robosaurus 2.0’s mental processes. They gripped their head viciously & whirred in slowly spiraling circles.

Alyssa was busy eating a fine plate of cacio e pepe, sighing in relief & enjoyment as she used the far edge of her mighty left hand to barbarically decapitate a bottle of Skeleton Grüner Veltliner & began guzzling down the delicate Austrian white wine in less than a chug, but a long-winded single swallow, her gasping maw able to contain a singular high-punted bottle. She threw it on the ground so emphatically that it left not a pile of broken glass, but more a controversially more dangerous pile of ground glass & resulting toxic vapors. Kama Mustafa set another bottle down & just collected the dust with around 12 sheets of lint rolling sticky paper. She gasped in appreciation & smiled down at him before she called “ANOTHER!” & noticed he had let a second one. She immediately repeated the process, barely missing Kama’s head by mere centimeters as he sighed (on the inside at least) & held his glass-polishing microfiber cloth over his face so he wouldn’t inhale dangerous atomized glass fumes. When he stepped away, it was clear there was a collision of impact melt breccia from the indented concrete below the poor carpeting bought wholesale from a closing arcade. Kama Mustafa put a towel over it & decided to retreat to behind the bar again. An extendable claw arm would be used for future bottles of wine to be delivered to the glowing goddess of good times sitting generally at a table nearby.

Three tables over, Beagle was sitting. He was undetected because Alyssa was busy eating, Robosaurus 2.0 was suffering from a non-visible existential crisis about their creation & purpose once more & Kama Mustafa was very busy trying to not void his bowels at the casual fury of a very tall woman (the cost of replacing the flooring causing similar hangups.) He texted furiously to Aria, who was currently on a philanthropic mission in Australia, trying to erase the plague that is the very existence of Vegemite.   
  
“They’re just sitting there! She’s eating & they’re just… sitting! I can’t stand this!” he texted with both of his human thumbs.

“I am not going to come back if you keep this up. You are being unreasonable. Robo 2 is just being nice to your Mom because they don’t understand human interaction. All they’ve been doing since you made them is ripping off limbs & jawbones for justice. Now, setting aside how gross that sounds or how effective it may or MAY NOT be, I think you are overestimating their ability. They barely talk, they don’t have a pelvis. What if they just want _friends_?”  
“Friends?”  
“Friends. People they like to hang out with. What if you’ve just been using them as a tool to do a job you took too much of yourself on? You worked too hard to spread justice & now you needed them to give yourself a break that you could’ve taken on your own.”

“Whoa. I never thought of it that way.”  
“Yeah, you don’t think much, honey-bunches of GOAT”

“I’ve been a gnarly shooby, haven’t I?”  
“It’s highly possible.”  
“I think I should apologize.”  
“Don’t interrupt their date, stupid, you’ll just make it worse”  
“You’re a lot smarter than me, Aria.”  
“I know,” she wrote back. Thirty seconds later, she texted back in all caps, “YOU DIDN’T TELL MEI ABOUT THIS, DID YOU”

“I am going to be in trouble when this is over. I realize that now.”

“If by trouble, you mean she might use a welding torch to cut off your right thumb, then you might be right! Why didn’t you just ask Robosaurus 1.0 to help you out?”  
“But he’s my friend! I can’t just ask him to risk himself now that he has a wife & stuff!” he returned, acknowledging Robosaurus “1.0’s” newfound choice of male self-identification.  
“But you’ll create someone functionally & mentally similar to do the exact same thing? That’s not much better. You’re not Mr. Wizard, you can’t make a robot that will work like that anyway, can you?”  
“Well, this is… different. Robo was built to be a best friend, this Robo is built to fight crime. TOTALLY DIFFERENT!” he noted.

“Just get out of there after you get me a basket of their garlic knots & a to-go bowl of Vodka Farfalle! I’ll be home if two hours & pasta helps the jet lag. Also, I got rid of the Vegemite. Prime Minister Rockatansky has accepted that they can just start manufacturing their own Superior Australian Marmite & they will try adding cheese to it too.”

“You’re doing the work of saints out there, Aria.”  
“Why thank you, darling!”

Beagle got up to sidle his way to the bar & order some food to go when there was a hard clang from above. It sounded like a magnitude stronger, but similar to a rock landing on top of a car. The steel roof was hit by another harsh clang as it caved harshly, a huge dip launching down. Something was trying to break through. Beagle, turning around, could only look in horror as it tore open. A crash of lightning shattered down through the torn metal roof & struck Robosaurus 2.0. At almost that same moment, Robosaurus reached a hand out to Alyssa & asked her:  
  
“Do I love you?”

Before an answer could be given, Robosaurus 2.0 was torn asunder, their adaptive programming flailing to repair themselves. Their hand began to try shoving their body together as Beagle ran towards him. Another bolt struck them, ripping their body that much more, separating it into two halves. A pair of combat boots trudged off from the broken roof above & retreated, her work done. Beagle ran just at them & dove towards their rent metallic form, his hands dipping into the pure Mountain Dew that pumped through their body. Tears poured from his face as he tries to gather up their mechanical parts. The adaptive technology dug into his skin as he gripped at the pith & marrow of their body. The technology began to try using his form to repair themselves & he fell forward. The adaptive programming hugged him close. It demanded his help without word. It demanded that they be repaired. They knew no source of aid. They knew no form of repair beyond themselves. It was a desperation that bordered on… hunger. Beagle was dragged in as the robotic components began to fuse into his body. He couldn’t bring himself to stop them from doing so. It would be like shoving a drowning man off of you, consigning them to the deep. Or perhaps he knew deep down that all of this was his own fault (ignoring clearly the _attacker_ who’s fault it truly was) & that he deserved whatever penance the fusion of their beings would create. Suddenly, in his head, he heard a voice. A robotic voice that spoke with pointed diction & commonly addressed the criminal element in a conciliatory manner.

“I can still be… free… I am sorry. Hand me your… Zun…” the voice of Robosaurus 2.0 asked as Beagle slapped it against his head.

Technology merged as his Zun was implanted with a technological carrying case that would do far more than just keep it from harm. It clicked on & the face of Robosaurus 2.0 displayed on it. Accessing the contacts within, Robosaurus 2.0 contacted Alyssa & sent her a single message for now.  
  
“I am okay. Help Beagle. My programming & adaptive body has fused into him. I worry that he may be injured.”

Alyssa, checking her phone, realized something was _wrong_ & strode mildly towards the accident three feet away. Beagle pressed both of his not entirely human hands to the ground, beginning the minimal ascent of returning to his feet. He reached up slowly & grabbed the edge of Robosaurus 2.0’s former chair, discarded mildly behind where they had been standing moments ago. Dragging semi-metallic fingers along the seat, he began to pull himself to his knees. Struggling to one foot, he pushed up to drive himself to the completeness of a default human stance. He held onto the back of the seat & stood, recovering himself as he took a deep breath inward. He was once again, for the second time in his life, fused into a Neo-Robot Heart powered cyborg. Alyssa helped him up & looked him over. She hugged him tightly, worried for her son (though forgetting that she had come close to snapping his spine doing this before) & soon set him down as she looked him over protectively. Standing up from the wreckage as Kama Mustafa peeled off from the certain danger in his white (read: rusty) 1988 Eagle Premier, the undercarriage scraping angrily against the sharp gutter to the streets below. He was just hoping that the lightning wouldn’t come after him next, driving into the night to get back to Fallsview Casino Resort & into his more comfortable lifestyle… Back in the now abandoned _Kama Mustafa’s Pastamania_ , a new Beaglesaurus stood, imbued with cyborg strength & agility once more by the mere action of a violent, wrought metal death fusion into a being that mocked both his own ability & possibly the very existence of God Themselves. Screaming to the Heavens, Alyssa smacked in the new, old metallic ribs with a broken table leg.

“I _can’t believe_ you’d ruin my dinner by summoning lightning to destroy your partner in crime, Beagle! I was really expecting better of you!” she shouted through a pout, texting back Robosaurus 2.0 about it as she soon learned of her mistake.

To make up for it, she made him a fresh tray of cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Before Beagle could dig in, a red hot sword smashed through the dinner table & Mei panted, all of a tiff she was in, & pointed the now bent softened metal at Beagle.

“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU JUST _MADE ANOTHER ROBO_?!”


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter IV —** _ **The Plague of**_ _ **the Lightning Revolution**_ or _**The Mean Girl**_ _ **Lightning**_ _ **Queen of Crippling Presents: The Busey Retribution!**_

Two weeks had passed between the Incident that Happened & Also Occurred In & Around the Vicinity of _Kama Mustafa’s Former Pastamania_ (the name had changed since _Kama Mustafa’s Pastamania_ was torn down from mysterious fire damage that occurred barely two days after the roof caved in on a night when no one showed up except for three weirdos. Reports seemed to indicate that Billford out near the Point saw a witch doctor who looked suspiciously like wanted criminal Papa Shango in the vacant lot across the street where once stood the decent restaurant & dopest night club in the Greater Neo-Oakland Metropolitan Area.) Beaglesaurus woke up in the morning to Robosaurus 2.0’s alarm as he trudged downstairs after slipping on his favorite green mesh shirt. Walking to his bedroom door after washing his face & brushing his teeth like a bold-hearted American cyborg superhero, he was stunned as, amid a perfectly sunny, if blustery, day, that a bolt of lightning suddenly careened in through his window & zapped his doorknob, reducing it to a half-molten, superheated piece of nonfunctional door equipment. Giving it a couple minutes to cool down, Beaglesaurus picked up a pillow & shoulder checked the door open from his side, not wanting anyone in his family to end up gripping the presumably also red hot and / or molten doorknob from the alternative side either. He would no doubt have to go about explaining _that_ to his mother. Or if she wasn’t busy texting Robosaurus 2.0, who was quickly running up an unidentifiable number on Beaglesaurus’ phone bill certainly.

It was two hours later, after a quick skate around the food court & other nearby areas at the Mall, skitching on the back of a Dodge Charger to get to Billford’s Sarnies to pick up the dopest French Dip this side of the St. Lawrence River. Slipping Billford a $40 bill, he did a kickflip across the length of their roof. Using one hand he held the $12.27 foot-long submarine sandwich & started to carefully using his first & second fingers on his other hand to lightly flick at the lid of the container containing the contents of a tasty brewed au jus. He kickflipped back onto the roof to eat at his personal rooftop table as he usually preferred (in case he needed to fly away to fight justice the fastest or witness crimes from a better vantage point.) He gracefully set down the au jus & lifted his chest and arms back to do a delicately complicated dipping technique he learned on the wrong side of the tracks, over in North Retro Angeles. Before he could achieve this perfection of the midday meal, lightning dashed down from the placid, cloudy sky to erase the very concept of his tasty roast beef juice. The table below it was equally warped to metallic wreckage, the plastic burning off of it easily with a gust of horrible smell wafting easily into Beaglesaurus’ sensitive nostrils. He rolled backwards from the mesh metal seat and was all but dumbfounded by the attack. No one was nearby, he was on the roof! There was nothing else in this area for miles &, being on a hill, he had the high ground indeed. Waiting around, nothing else happened, even when Beaglesaurus did about four double takes to try to catch the lightning & decided he may need to invest in some bottles to do so.

Two hours later than that, Beaglesaurus fishes his arm into the neighborhood mailbox with his own personalized fire-design key & drew out a copy of Peter Farrelly’s _Dumb & Dumbe_ _r_ out of it. Barely seconds behind him, a blast of lightning dances towards his feet menacingly, making him just scared enough to drop the DVD copy of the quintessential ‘90s comedy was annihilated the second it fell to the ground, reducing it to a very warped plastic & metal lump on the sidewalk that Beaglesaurus would be required later by a certain Mayor of Neo-Oakland to remove with a very small toothbrush. He has still to completely remove it from the mailbox outside his house to this very day.

Two hours later still, Beaglesaurus was becoming paranoid about lightning surrounding him & destroying everything that brought him mild amounts of joy. Opening his Robosaurus 2.0 Phone, Robosaurus 2.0 swiped his access panel from the screen, so Beaglesaurus could use his phone still while they were busy texting Alyssa about cooking recipes for a tasty new dango style. He opened a mail app and learned there was another video coming in. Soon after, a New Pony Expressman handed Beaglesaurus a package containing the single-bite video device (called “Video Bites”) from his favorite subscribed video content influencer / creator, Rupert the Bear, former children’s show icon & currently… the star of the premier short-video subscription service, YourTube. In the advent of Mechagodzilla vaping the entirety of the internet, the world had had to adapt & the easiest way to do that _clearly_ was allowing people to sign up to videos at a low monthly cost that would send SIM cards to install in your phone with collectible value, carrying cases & specialized phone holders & lanyards. It was very much clear that Beaglesaurus (or Beagle, when his subscription had started,) was a total nut when it came to getting in a new video from the most entertaining ursine animal-man late of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain & Wales.

Unfortunately once more, our hero was struck not by lightning, but by surprise when he soon discovered that the title was listed as “ _Rupert the Bear Unboxing PS9 Psycho-Implant & Installation. (FINAL)_.” What was most confusing was that it was _clear_ that the PS9 Psycho-Implant (& it’s subsequent installation) was _obviously_ the kind of easy, low-risk, high-reward exchange that it could easily be completed in less than 12 minutes time! But the video was at least a half-hour long! And, what’s more, there weren’t any videos _specifically_ concerning the PS9 Psycho-Implant (or it’s installation, for that matter) beforehand! It _did_ have it’s own special “corner” among Rupert the Bear’s videos, but it was never in a delineated fashion that would necessitate the production of the term (FINAL) on it, it had never really _began_ as a topic all its own! Even more, there was little to say about it in the first place: the console add-on had just come out & the one game on it was the classic _Gubble_ (formerly revamped for a PS7 exclusive _Gubble: The Viridi_ _an_ _Collection_ , containing the first four of the _Gubble_ series, thereby making this _well tread ground_ ) so there wasn’t much to _say_ about it. Even implementation or description of its gameplay would be simple. How could this video _possibly_ end up being this long without superchats (read from postcards) or since streaming had been dead since the Mechagodzilla Vaping Collapse? It was a conundrum indeed, that Beaglesaurus knew all too well could be solved by merely _watching_ it. Doing so, he was filled with a horror that drove to the very heart of his Neo-Robot Heart as he witnessed what had happened.

A bumper made clear that this is the last video from Rupert the Bear & refunds would be made accordingly. The video to be displayed was not edited (such vague ideas as censorship were harder to tack down when it came to the personalized style of YourTube) &, out of respect, showed Rupert the Bear’s last moments in full. The video began simply enough with Rupert the Bear’s trademarked theme song & him leaning on his elbow provocatively, winking to the audience. Rupert would proceed through his usual segments before he got to the main attraction, the unboxing & subsequent installation of the PlayStation 9’s new Psycho-Implant, enabling a new age mental web connection that was _guaranteed_ (by no clear metric & certainly without the promise of refund) to be _just as_ , if not _more_ , effective than the former Information Superhighway. Rupert the Bear soon unboxed, displayed & unraveled every piece of equipment from the installation package & flashed the shiny new _Gubble_ jewel case that would indeed carry the lackluster, yet nostalgic, game that won our hearts back in the halcyon days of 202X. Using the included installation rifle, Rupert the Bear locked in the Psycho-Implant & soon fired it, injecting it directly into his ursine spinal column roundabouts the thoracic area.

“Now, my chums, the important part after this according to the instructions, is that I can’t get anything in this installation sight or I’ll almost definitely get a terrifying form of meningitis! So, what I’m going to do is make my way over to the good old medicine cabinet to get myself a plaster to cover it up! Isn’t it great what modern science can do?” Rupert the Bear cheerily told viewers across the world as he picked up his camera to walk with him to the bathroom, picking the bandages out of the medicine cabinet & then sitting back down, only to be then immediately struck by lightning.

Screaming in horrible pain, Rupert the Bear’s struggles were either cruelly or sympathetically ended by a second through fourth strike, indicating both that this was _clearly_ beyond coincidence & further that he was at rest for good, since his body had been reduced to what looked like a decently large pile of ash. The remainder of the video were reactions from friends & Mr. & Mrs. Bear sobbing directly into the camera, asking if loyal subscribers could continue to send money for a couple months to help aid them in their loss. Beaglesaurus, oily tears dripping from one of his less than human eyes, were whipped away by him spinning around at top speeds. He was already filling out a check made out to Cash (He wasn’t particularly sure what Mrs. Bear’s _name_ was) & began sending it to the already familiar PO box address where Rupert formerly would garner a menagerie of welcome fan letters & gifts the world around. He slowly licked the envelope & reached out across the table to see how many _dope as hell_ dragon stamps he had left in his book of stamps, only for lightning to scatter through his window, smudging each stamp _just enough_ that they would be unreadable to a mail carrier & therefore, more than likely returned to sender. Then, while his back was turned to mourn the stamps that were at one end, the lightning crashed farther through the same window & lit his now sealed envelope on fire, leaving a definitive char mark on his fine mahogany work table he had installed in a decent amount of his personal bedroom (which he had rarely used, both the table due to being busy with justice related ventures, & the bed because he tended to sleep over at Aria’s house when she was in town or just spent long nights staring up at the stars on his roof, falling asleep to the sound of the mild cries of cicadas in the middle distance.) Beaglesaurus was certainly only a few more madcap mishaps before the sum totality of his fury was too soon released. He decided to try to the least radical thing he could today (not that he had a choice in the matter) if it meant supporting the Bear family & began a slow skate ride to the local Second DiBiase Bank in northtown, achieving amounts of cool displayed with mere skating forward w/ no tricks since the Lords of Dogtown began their invasion of the zeitgeist, demanding that skateboarding be treated as just as valid as other extreme sports.

On his way there, he ollied over a lazy dog sleeping on the sidewalk, performing a soft 180 twist as he scritched passionately behind the dog’s ears, waking up the hound & letting it understand that affection was the true source of a dog’s inherent purpose besides survival, unlocking something akin to the currently theorized Chapman Hierarchy of Canine Needs in the brain of this old salt of a mutt. The dog walked off, its life changed as it sped off to a new life. However, in this strategically complicated maneuver, Beaglesaurus found his reborn tail had managed to flick upwards at the wrong moment & it had sprung forth from his wallet. Luckily, an applicable wallet-chain attaching to the rear belt loop of his leather skating pants secured the billfold & card holding creation’s ability to do just that. Unluckily, the 180 twist on this particularly bomb move made his wallet chain wrap around a speed limit sign, hooking at Beaglesaurus’ leather skating pants as he was momentarily restrained. The ensuing path of gravity made him faceplant in a gnarly manner that was not very choice _or_ cash money to experience. What’s worse, the strain was clearly far too much for mere fine Moroccan leather to stand & his pants loop was torn viciously from its mooring home holding Beaglesaurus’ rainbow festooned belt aloft. It would take only fifteen minutes to fix for his excessively fashionable younger sister, Bagelsaurus, to achieve as the Baroness of Chess was not only currently the most exciting model on the runways of Milan, Paris & Macao, but also the only current Ultra Grandmaster of Chess (having achieved such an imposing title when she defeated a confused delegation of Martian dignitaries in a high stakes game, costing them a sizable chunk of the south side of the Olympus Mons [fortunately, it was not found to contain anything of particular worth & the Martians already found it as _something of an eyesore_.]) Two hours later, he awoke to find a man mildly shoving his wallet at his cheek until he woke up & gripped it.

“Oh, thanks…” Beaglesaurus said weakly, giving him a short nod of acknowledgment & a soft smile of gratitude as he began to get back to his feet.

It was seconds before he realized what was no doubt soon to happen as the man got back into his 2006 Saturn Ion, just in time for it to be struck by lightning. Seeing a hole in the hood of his car, he got out as Beaglesaurus struggled to get to running at him, only for the man to point a thumb at the vehicle & give a nigh comical shrug before a second bolt struck the car. It promptly exploded into pieces of jagged metal & fiery explosion that the man was less than happy to be in the blast radius of. This, as were all problems lately for Beaglesaurus lately, punctuated with a quick & painless death of being violently burnt & electrocuted by sky-borne wrath descending from the firmament to annihilate anything that Beaglesaurus found vaguely interesting. Beaglesaurus decided at this point that charity would have to wait for a day that wasn’t being consistently destroyed by lightning, much like everything he loved to a lesser extent) & decided to go past skitching his way home, no doubt due to lightning related interference that would surely make explaining it to another charred corpse a tinge more awkward to those who might be doing the listening on the departed’s behalf. Trudging into his home, it was already well past night. Dinner was sure to be cold, if served at all, by this point & he resigned himself to the necessity of warming his food by whatever means he could to divine its true taste potentials. But first, the coldness was still more affecting to a young skateboarding Archduke of the Skate Park due to him only wearing his favorite mesh green shirt out (usually an astute amount of skateboard tricks & physical exertion tended to stave off the literal cold, but having been less than active on his skate back home.) He went to the mudroom & kicked off his candy apple red Converse All-Stars & opened the coat closet to find his trademark trench coat. He whipped it out to let it fall down over his waiting arms, bent behind him at a possibly torturous position otherwise, only for lightning to strike through the small window at the top of the phenomenally tall door of his (having a 15’ tall mother will necessitate such things) & zapped his finely bespoke trench coat as the ash of his personal failure began to rain on his body, like a simile of his day’s continual wrath at now completely consistent lightning based harassment. He would become surely overcome with fury had he not noticed something that was particularly out of order in the nature of his house.

It was certainly in a post-dinner hour, yet everything was _quiet…_ possibly an unusually inordinate amount of quiet presented to him! It became very soon to realize that there was reason to this perpetually irksome state of non-auditory influence & that television would certainly be on _at minimum_ in the background of Jumbolicious reading the evening paper (& making subsequent expected noises thereof.) The sound of his older sister Swordsaurus cutting through bamboo stalks in the backyard to the rhythm of King Crimson’s _Three of a Perfect Pair_ was nowhere to be heard. Bagelsaurus was not to be heard painting her nails, but this wasn’t as insane a notion, since it was usually very quiet. But in that dearth of din, there _would_ be that subtle sound were it _also_ happening at that moment within earshot of Beaglesaurus’ superior cyborg auditory enhancements.

It would be another several minutes of dawdling in his own paranoia about the lack of homely sound design decorating the casualness of his longtime abode before he notices there was a perfectly acceptable explanation… or at least part of one: his sister, Bagelsaurus, was hiding under some coats in the coat closet. Beaglesaurus had decided that it was _probably_ not her particular decision to hide here to sleep, especially considering her currently favorite shoes & hat were gone & she was also bound & gagged. He went to free his less affable of younger siblings as he dragged her by shoulders into the mudroom proper (or as proper as the general area of a mudroom could be) & gave her soft, less than affectionate flicks on the tip of the nose. This proved to be less than helpful to waking her, but appropriately helpful to him getting slapping in the face. Due to a shining tungsten-carbide surface where that cheek had once been made of flesh to be reddened, Bagelsaurus growled angrily in her sleep and shook her fist with goading arrogance at the no one that was in front of her until Beaglesaurus started to graduate his annoying wake-up tactics to getting a glass (or more if needed) of water to splash on her face. With her hat misplaced elsewhere, she would _surely_ not try to stave a chasm into his generally still weak to staving parts of his skull if he did it quickly… or from a distance, he’d hoped. He knew too well that she knew which parts of his skull were easier to stave holes in. Thus, he went to appropriate a glass from the kitchen & found his parents laying laterally across the floor, snoozing at similar paces to his sister & likewise captives of their slumber & of whoever had left them tied up on the floor. He decided to take things one step at a time, rolling both of his not entirely human eyes as he filled a glass with tap water (the least appetizing of waters you can acquire in your own house, short of bath water) & walked back to the mudroom. He casually tossed it in his sister’s face & she sat straight up, not unlike Michael Myers in his starring role in the film _Hallowe’en_ , & glared at him. Were this household any more anime than it was now, her hair would have begun spinning in a corona of fury that would well depict the doom she intended to rain upon his suspecting pate. However, their household only had so much anime to go around & it was more than clear that she was not at her best look at the moment, all things considered. She gritted both of her human jaws to growl at him &, finding he had no lapels to angrily seize him by, took a fake fur mink coat from the coat closet & draped it over his shoulders before she grabbed both lapels & began shoving her nose against his.

“What did you do with my hat, you cockeyed wastrel?” she demanded to know through clenched teeth.

“ _I_ don’t know! I just got home & found you tied up in the closet! I don’t know who took it! But… it certainly wasn’t me & you can _definitely_ beat whoever it is to a finite amount of pulp!” he promised, ever-pleasing towards his more violent of younger sisters. She let out a protracted groan of displeasure.  
“Alright… where are Mom & Dad?” she asked, pinching the space between her eyes & then gently massaging her temples with her manicured fingertips in a well understood universal symbol of either being incredibly frustrated to the point of headache (or just having a headache.)

“They’re on the floor in the kitchen.”  
“Gross.”  
“No, I mean they’re passed out too.”  
“Gross.”  
“I don’t think they did it on _purpose_ ,” he pointed out, more sternly. His Robosaurus 2.0 Phone pinged him loudly & displayed a message for him.  
“Alyssa has not responded for approximately 20 minutes. The ingestion of dinner should not take this long & I have grown worried that something has happened to her in the absence of my conversational presence.” Beaglesaurus texted back.

“I know, I’m investigating it now. Did she send anything that sounded like she was in any danger?” he asked the Robosaurus 2.0 Phone.

“Negative. She merely said she was finished cooking Thursday Turkey. Do you think that Thursday Turkey is a metaphor for her love for me?”  
“It’s just turkey she cooks for Thursday’s dinner weekly. No part of it at all has anything to do with love or affection, other than her love of us being well-fed,” Beaglesaurus offered as explanation until he whipped around, realizing what was wrong, “Wait… did you all just pass out after having Thursday Turkey without me?! And _also_ get captured by home invaders that were _definitely_ the ones who _took your hat_?” Beaglesaurus asked of his sister, making sure to emphasize that someone else was to blame & that she would have a perfectly cruel target for her mild vengeance. Regardless, Bagelsaurus gripped “his” coat lapels again & then whipped him to the side, dragging the coat off of him as she slipped it on herself (it _was_ her coat after all) & smiled a devious smile.

“Well, if that’s the case, that’s probably what happened! The last thing I remember after picking my teeth clean was Hope going upstairs to watch her stories. Hmm, I _do_ remember someone asking about your Coke Rewards Collection though…”  
“Egad!” Beaglesaurus exclaimed, realizing at least his favorite younger sister _and / or_ his collection of Coke Rewards bottle-caps were in danger.

“Hey, where are my _shoes_?!” she shouted up after him, realizing her emerald green 5” platform heels were just as identically missing as her fashionable mushroom cap chapeau.

Over 12 years ago, when Coke Rewards had been invented, Beagle had noticed in his youth that his sweetheart & occasional girl he liked (now currently, his wife) Coda Aria had disliked the taste of Crystal Pepsi for a reason she never could quite understand. Tasting it himself, he agreed, it tasted horrible & should be eliminated completely. Ever since that fateful day that they both drank a subpar soda with little particular difference in taste from normal Coca Cola, they had been at least partially in love & he had made it a personal mission of his to collect enough Coke Rewards on the underside of Coke product bottle-caps to buy up every bottle of Crystal Pepsi & destroy it, one way or another. He was still unsure if he could somehow turn the Coke Rewards into a controlling stock interest to ensure no new Crystal Pepsi would ever be created again, but if he had to eternally buy out the stock of confusing clear cola beverages, he would do that just to make his wife gloriously elated at his dedication, commitment & also his love for her that the philanthropic elimination of Crystal Pepsi _definitely_ would be indicative of. Rushing in, Beaglesaurus kicked open his younger sister’s door & found Hope watching her usual 7pm stories of old reruns of Doraemon that he’d recorded for her on VHS when he was young (the introduction of these tapes had been one of the first conciliatory moments from when his new stepsister had been almost non-vocal in her shyness.) He nodded in understanding, seeing she was completely unharmed & untouched by the violences & terrors of this harsh modern landscape in which she lived herself (& indeed, that we all do & will.)

“Oi! Hey _bitch_!” a snarky, affronterous voice announced snidely to Beaglesaurus as he opened the door to his own room. Splayed on his bed, making sure to kick her muddy combat boots across the previously pristine surface, delving further to make sure even the fitted sheet was inconvenienced with mud as she cackled, “What’s nasty, _skanks_?” she demanded to know from him.

“I don’t know what that means…” Beaglesaurus said, in a stunted, confused manner (due to being confused as to what she was talking about.)

“Oh, _not sorry_ , I forgot to introduce myself to someone _lame_ like your partially metallic ass! These spicy memes are going nasty because the Mean Girl Queen of Lightning is in your house, slut! _My_ name is Aridactyl Gonzales, you can _probably_ guess how I got that name!”

It was relatively obvious to most viewers what she may have meant. Aridactyl was all of a 5’9” multiracial girl of 19, the same age that Beaglesaurus had been when his first slew of magnificent adventures dotted him across the Remaining American landscape to save the world in the first book. Sneering at him from behind an inherent scowl, she whipped herself onto her feet. The left side of her almost painfully pink hair drooped all the way down to the midriff as she flicked her head to her right side, displaying on the back of her purple Lycra shirt an imposing kanji (富 **有** , “fuyū” meaning rich) that Beaglesaurus gasped as if he actually understood what it meant.

“So you’re… _one of them_?!” he asked, trying to lure her into expositing more about herself.

“That’s right, _bitch_ , I’m part of the 1%, so there isn’t shit you can do to stop me! I can wander into your house, tie up your family, ruin everything with lightning for you all day & you can’t touch me!” she announced, as haughtily as haughtiness could be.

Cut from the back of the sleeves of her Lycra shirt, it was more than probable where her name arose, considering from each arm, from the outward facing edge of each forearm to the rear of each upper arm, were legitimately large fleshy wings like that of some sort of reptilian creature that Beaglesaurus somehow could not quite identify. It wasn’t until he noticed the Pteranodon’s long-headed crest showing off from the back of her skull that it became clear that she was somehow just as much a _pterosaur_ as he was once a dinosaur & robot & human hybrid (& currently robot & human hybrid with some dinosaur features.) She swooped back around, whipping out her seven foot wingspan, then dragged her long left side of her hair back behind her (the right side only reached her cheek, giving her an infinitely asymmetrical look.) On the front of her Lycra shirt, it read MONEY in large gold leaf letters. About her hips, she had a pair of fine black Corinthian leather capri shorts with a rather conspicuous gold leaf $ on each hip. Suddenly, the armoire in Beaglesaurus’ room rattled angrily, as if a wild animal had been enclosed inside & Aridactyl snickered, holding her hand in front of her face as if to further enhance her self-imagined position of being higher than him.

“What is the point of all this? Why did you send constant lightning after me to ruin my day so methodically?! Why did you kidnap most of my family? And what did you hide in my armoire?!”

“Armoire?”

“The… wardrobe…” he said, pointing to the jostling piece of storage furniture.

“Oh, your _clothes’ hovel_!” she mocked as she tittered snidely at him, “Well, to answer them _correctly_ , the lightning plague was sent by me to test your _worth_! You have been found _lacking_ on all levels! Your taste in food, your taste in media, your taste in…” she made a disgusted noise, “ _mercy for others_ disgusts me entirely! You need to learn that your world is a waste of time & your foolhardy heroism is just a cheap ruse for you to gallivant around like the man in charge & beat people without criticism because they’re ‘evil,’ _riiiiiight_?” she taunted, licking both of her glittering jade green lips, “Your idiot family were no match for me on all accounts too! I walked in & they were already all asleep! I didn’t need to attack them or drug them at all… they were like _turkeys_ , staring up at the rain, waiting to _drown_! All of this is to give someone who has everything something to _do_! If my criminal empire got too _boring_ , I wouldn’t be inviting people to _my_ mansion to do drugs & get into _knife fights_! But… alas, even that got _boring_ too!” she said with a more angered tone of voice.

“So this is just to get your jollies? Just something to do by attacking people who don’t have powers like you? What for? Did your powers come from some horrible accident that you think you need to just lash out at everyone over?” he asked, disgusted by her callous, vague ideas of her own entertainment in the face of other people’s rights & lives.

“Ha! Ha Ha Ha!” she laughed, the latter part released in slow, sharp chuckles, “You _slimy dolt_! I got these powers the way all full-blooded America trillionaire kids my age should: I _paid top dollar_ & I got what I paid for! I’m no _freak_ like you! I _made_ myself better than everyone _physically_ just as much as I’m already better than you in _looks_ , in _station_ , in _stature_ & in _general_! Your greasy hands aren’t going to even touch me! And… as for your _clothes’ hovel_ , why don’t I… show you?!” she said, before she started her sharp chuckles again & lightning flickered off her left shoulder to snap the doors off the armoire.

Stalking from the armoire, an inhuman experiment created of pure cruelty in origin emerged. From the waist down, it seemed only like a normal disheveled man without shoes on & with what looked like an ankle monitor on their right ankle. From the waist up, though, things went _far_ out of ordinary. From the left side, Gary Busey stood shirtless, his right arm sewn to the severed stump of Jake Busey’s left arm, connected in a particularly strained connection of severed arms. The sewing clearly not about to hold, was also amended together with some thick metal panels & thick rivets holding them together. It smelled infected. Haphazard stitching & what looked like relatively wide shoelaces were used to hold their interior ribs together from the side. Jake Busey’s former right hand had been replaced with a steak knife seemingly fused into a poorly cauterized wound. This looked less like a monster & more like a complete medical mess that war criminals would throw up at.

“See here, _slut_ , I’m here to get what money can’t buy: a better of a good time! So, I vivisected these two slumpheaded dipshits together & now you will do battle with my filthy henchman! Go, Altered Busey! Tear him _limb from limb_!” she called to the beast of a person.

The Altered Busey trudged forward out of the wardrobe, revealing that Gary Busey’s tongue had been burnt beyond repair & they together more or less just groaned angrily before they fell forward. Beaglesaurus looked back to her scornfully & then back to the creature sent to attack him. The Altered Busey had already managed to stab themselves in their ribs, groaning as both of him writhed on the ground.

“Aha! So it seems you made one fatal flaw! A man with two heads & half as many arms constructed like this? Tsk tsk tsk! They have not an ounce of coordination involved with them! They can’t even stand without _help_ , can they? I mean… this is less terrifying and more just… sad…”  
“Ha! So you _get it already_! One of you will have to _die_ to get to me! He and he hate me so much that they’d love to drive that knife into my fine body, but they’ll have to get through _you_ first, _won’t they_?”

The Altered Busey had yet to get up & could very well already be dead it seemed. Aridactyl bit her lip in rage seeing that her henchman had completely failed to achieve any amount of sinister intimidation with its monstrous look.

“Well… I guess then we’ll have to go through this _another way_!” she cried aloud as she jumped down from his bed & flung a kick at his chest, noticing how distracted he was by a moaning shamble of personages possibly leaking unknowable fluids into his hardwood floor.

Beaglesaurus was knocked back as Aridactyl ripped his Special Closet door from its hinges & blasted a violent beam of exalting lightning into his Coke Rewards Bottle Cap Collection, melting them into even _less_ legible caps with codes he should’ve turned in to a _decent_ website to accept the Rewards as he got up & whipped around try to strike her with his tail. She jumped over _while yawning_ & stomped a combat boot on his socked right foot.

“The only question I couldn’t answer was what was in… here!” she said as she pointed a jade fingernailed first finger at the secret panel at the back of his Special Closet. She pushed it & revealed a small black safe that she hefted with both hands up into Beaglesaurus’ face, “Tell me what it is or I’ll bludgeon you to death with it!”

“Wait!”

“For _what_?” she asks as she spat on his floor, amid the fumes of melting plastic as she swung the safe through the air enough to clear a path for her to walk back out into the main room.

“I can open it for you. That’s what you’re curious about, isn’t it? Especially since… _you can’t open it yourself_?” he asks, noticing a singular flaw in her otherwise prissy surety.

“I can admit… I didn’t want to shatter anything inside it. Lightning, useful as it can be, doesn’t have… the finesse I may need at times. I don’t _feel like_ hiring a safecracker to come here & spot-weld it open, but… maybe if whatever is in here is better than what I _crave_ out of the pound of flesh I want off of you… I might let you go for now…”

“There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” he challenged.

“I _could_ just kill you & your family & walk out of here with this _and_ hire a safecracker…” she said as she started to slowly strafe to the right.

“Yeah, but doesn’t that sound like _a lot of work_ , huh?” he returned, strafing left to create a threatening circling that would no doubt stir up a fight soon.

“…Deal!” she said with a loud laugh before she swung the safe high & caved a hole in the floor, smashing the safe into the den below before she whipped her arms out & let lightning carve a larger hole & dove through it, flying around his voluminous den as she cackled, “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”

Beaglesaurus merely rolled both of his not entirely human eyes & jumped down himself, certain he would end up solving _that_ problem by putting a rug over the hole & _commonly_ forgetting that there was a huge hole on it in the future. Hoping to get around all this, he stepped forward to the safe that had crashed through his parents’ glass & wood coffee table & destroyed Jumbolicious’ well-worn copy of _Jeff Foxworthy’s Redneck Dictionary: Words You Thought You Knew the Meaning Of_ & began opening it as he huddled over it so Ari wouldn’t see the combination. She landed as she heard the handle of it click open & set a combat boot on top of it as she thirstily waited to see what was inside.

“It’s been around four years after my dad used his superior lawyering skills to solve the McKee-Hostess Food Wars of 201X. In exchange, they gave my dad each a lifetime supply coupon for all Hostess Fruit Pies & Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies… for all time. He… gave them to me so I could enjoy the fruits of his labors… It was… almost a joke there, huh?” he asked, both rhetorically & also nostalgically. “Just… don’t get them too bent up, they are also made of solid gold.”

Aridactyl was stunningly quiet for a time & got out her checkbook. She drew the solid gold tablets from both of his less than entirely human hands & tucked them into the checkbook, using four hair ties from her pocket to hold them together.

“This time… you win. You’re lucky that I’m a girl who _loooooves_ her sweets. And although Oatmeal Creme Pies are relatively trash when it comes to snack cakes… I can’t resist the flaky crust & _real fruit filling_ of a Hostess Fruit Pie! _There’s a big delight_!” she said, the last part shouted as a challenge.

“In every bite…” Beaglesaurus thought, on his knees, defeated, hoping she would just leave and not harm his family any more.

“I guess this will do for now. If I get _bored_ , I’ll be sure to come back & steal your Mom’s hair!” she cackled again before she took off, flying out the fine picture window in their den & laughed into the night.

Whatever her mission was, it was complete for now. Beaglesaurus swore inwardly that he’d have to do something. He couldn’t lose like this again. He had to protect his family & no amount of cool skateboard moves or heavy artillery guns were going to stop her, it seemed. He shook his head & gripped it with his hands. He was going to get everyone together. He was going to see what he could do. He was going to _stop this_ for sure before she came back. Or in case she came back. Either way, were Aridactyl to return or not, she would pay. He was a man pushed too far. She had gone out of her way to make all of this as personal as she could. He would have to take from her twice as much as she had from him! Something his father had worked hard for had been stolen… and he was intent to return it to the way things had been before all this… Back when he was still human. It was all her fault. And he was _furious_. He screamed to the uncaring storm-laden sky as thunder finally followed the lightning & symbolically heavy rain began to pour into his windows. Once he was done, he got up & started to use pieces of the broken coffee table to start pinning them to the at least four broken windows in his house to keep the rain from getting in. He began thinking of how best to assemble the forces on his side as his older sister Swordsaurus fell out of a tangled hammock in the adjoining living room, knocking Beaglesaurus in the left ankle with her bokutō, making him reel to his knees & falling on his back, groaning at her unknowing assault.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part II of Some Amount:**

**Monster Quest — The Oatmeal Ghost Mansion Donnybrook**

**Chapter I — _The Advent of the Monster Creating Dark King of Tortures_** or **_There’s a New Kid in Town! (I Don’t Wanna Hear It!)_**

It had been almost an entire month since the encounters with Aridactyl & the foolhardy Buseys had come about & Beaglesaurus was in a rut of sorrows as of late. While deftly ignoring a box of Yummy Mummy that had surely gone stale over some time (He could not recall _when_ it was purchased, merely that it was a long time ago, it looked as if it might be the old designs too…) to instead grip a mighty box of Froot Loops. Stepping backwards to drag this monolith of breakfast enjoyment to the counter as Bagelsaurus sauntered over, her fine hat replaced on her head (it had been rolled up & hidden in the umbrella stand in the mudroom.)

“BRO! I _cannot_ believe this! There is a box of cereal _right there_ & you’re gonna just _open_ a new box?! You are just the _worst_ today, Beagle!” she snapped as she smacked him with an ornamental Cantonese fan & snatched the Froot Loops from his eager to enjoy hands, “Seriously? You’re not even good at being a justice hero warrior anymore!” she said as she stole a third of the box into a large saucepan to personally ingest.

A stunned Beaglesaurus frowned after his mind caught up with his sister’s sudden (though not _unexpected_ ) rudeness & leaned back against the counter. They exchanged glares & pulled faces of disdain at one another before Bagelsaurus stormed off. Swordsaurus soon entered & closed her book for once & dragged Beaglesaurus’ hand away from the Froot Loops as well, using her scabbard to pin his wrist to the counter as she emptied a third & then some into the Mr. Coffee carafe she was carrying & then turned to glare at him as well.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve trying to use up all the milk, little bro! You will pay dearly for your crimes against art & love! If you attempt to usurp the milk again, brother, you will suffer a horrid death like the grand traitor, Cao Cao!” Swordsaurus threatened, ominously (& confusingly, for that matter & context.)

“I didn’t even go near the milk! I barely even have the cereal!” he answered, frustrated by now.

“Your lies will bury you among the wine dark seas of the late city of Toronto! Have you not an ounce of shame in your body, you mechanical wretch?” she demanded of him, in her usual rather poetic style of speech, “So beat it already or I’ll tear your lips off.”

Dejected by his sisters’ coldnesses, he shook his head & walked away. They were acting strangely. Though it wasn’t uncommon for his sisters to lean on or otherwise nettle him, today seemed… _different_. Everyone seemed like they were angry at him underneath. In a way that he couldn’t quite understand, something was happening & he was sure to not be able to tell what the days incoming held for him. He would soon, as the days came. Heading out to get a breakfast sandwich over at Billford’s Sarnies, he flipped his board up into his hand & began to take off. Along the way, everyone seemed leery of him. They gave him the same look that they’d give a normal young man with mild cybernetic parts & his favorite mesh green shirt were he not wearing anything below the belt. Luckily for Beaglesaurus, that wasn’t the case this time & he just felt oddly put off by the disdainful looks of society. Mothers pulled their children closer to them & some local kids started shoving at him, making him olly off the curb & into the street, which essentially stopped the joys of skateboarding. Picking up his board, he trudged his way out to Billford’s & soon found there was a giant swarm of people hiving up & around the sandwich shop of mild regard. Heading closer, he ingratiated himself into the crowd as most people do: by shoving people softly by the arms to get anywhere closer. Stepping carefully, he started to try subtly shifting his skateboard to wedge people apart to get through the crowd, not too unlike a crowbar. Wading his way through the crowd like so much water involved in an ocean, he soon made it to the counter & found Billford’s crafty hands of intricate art dealing sandwiches at a rate of knots as he silently stared at the ceiling.

“What’s up with all the business?”  
“Oh… it’s _you_!” Billford said snidely.

“What’s the sitch? Why are _you_ upset with me? I barely even said anything to you today!” Beaglesaurus noted squarely.

“Sorry, it’s super-busy because there’s a new hero in town. He’s up on the roof, having a snack!” he said as he thumbed his way to the stairs, which were already populated.

Beaglesaurus climbed the steps to find squealing fangirls doing what they do best: Squealing in admiration of others. Parting the tides of impressionable young ladies, he suddenly saw him. Sitting amid the ladies as they cried for his attention sat the hottest new superhero of the Greater Neo-Oakland Metropolitan Area District. Sitting at a height lower than his full 6’4”, was a snarky looking Asian fellow who looked like he was roughly around the age of 22 (this is because he was.) Sprouting from his head was a veritable thornbush of thick, spiked green hair & unmatching thin green eyebrows. He was using his entirely inhuman golden teeth to bite through a brined dill pickle, then showed up intricately by making a short twisting motion with his fingers as he used his teeth to carefully eat the pickle like a cob of corn. He dropped the perfectly edible “core” of the pickle directly on top of his untouched sandwich, letting pickled juices easily soak into it. The sandwich would be ruined for sure or at least harder to handle. This was a man playing a dangerous game. Cascading across both of his human shoulders sat a blue velvet coat with thick white fur bushing up around the neck & armholes & down the chest of the lapels. Considering it was summer, it would be hellish to wear in public. What’s more, it was clearly tucked _into_ his white silk pants, making odd bunching around the mid-thigh. He didn’t seem to easily recognize anything about there being two 4’ wings from the back of his arms, extending through a slat cut in the incredibly expensive jacket & the long angled crest that sprouted from the back of his head, though shown off easily by his thick hair. His coat was worn open, showing off a more telling tee shirt covered in gold leaf & with a fat black $ on the chest in a circle.

“So the _real_ problem with being the coolest monster hunter in the world is that sometimes there just aren’t any to find! _But_ I have it on only the greatest of authorities that there are at _least_ four in the area. I mean, _that many_? In _one area_? That sounds like one of two problems: Either you’ve got something that’s gonna keep on growing monsters in your area, which I’ll need to stick around for…” he said before his eyes angled entirely at Beaglesaurus & met his gaze, “Or it means whoever the big hero in town is right now… that he’s a huge failure & a useless jerk! He can’t accomplish something as _simple_ & _easy_ as just _keeping monsters out of Neo-Oakland_!” he said in an arrogant tone that implied that it was certainly the latter & that this was all Beaglesaurus’ fault.

The crowds cheered & grabbed Beaglesaurus by the arms & flung him off the side of the building, shouting disdainful words about his failures & how already 20 people had been killed by these monsters! Beaglesaurus unleashed all of his might to land on both of his less than human feet in his Converses & sprung back, leaping up onto the edge of the rooftop dining area. He gripped one metallic hand entirely over one of the offending ladies’ heads & lifted her off of both of her feet before he set her down in a chair at a different table, then sat down across from the new guy, who he now noticed was sitting at _his_ table! The newcomer stood up & looked back over his shoulder. His coat displayed a kanji on the back as well ( **偉** , “i” meaning **greatness** ) & looked towards the assortment of ladies, giving them a gilt smile & they all swooned at once, flowing backwards like waves ebbing from the shores as they dashed back against the rocks (which here described the stairs that they ended up falling back down, turning into a many person pileup.) The skilled skateboarder merely held onto the table as the wave of women buffeted against him as they began to drain down the stairwell not unlike a toilet slowly unclogging itself as it was Beaglesaurus & the newcomer sitting across from each other. The newcomer stepped up onto the table, leaving inky footprints all over it from his black rubber Crocs, which he was wearing over a pair of knee-high orange dress socks, grunting in something close to an obnoxious laugh. He began pulling at the umbrella stand in the center of the table until he merely twisted, snapping the pole off inside the stand as he snarked even louder at the occurrence.

“Look, what’s your _deal_ , man? Why are you bugging me with all this like a taupe Tuesday morning when you’re the one making hats on a Sunday afternoon?” Beaglesaurus implored of him as the newcomer coldly shook his head.

“That sure is the _dumbest_ question I’ve heard all day! Lemme break it down in small little _bite-size_ chunks so you don’t hurt your poor inferior brain!” he chortled as he shut the umbrella & used it to slam the tip into the table, leaving a dent in the center deep enough that the broken umbrella stalk could not be removed anymore &, worse, made the table a concavity that nothing could easily set on it without slipping, threatening to dump everything out of your tasty sandwich basket or, worse still, getting your drink on your food! “The answer is that I’m getting my revengenanance on _you_ , Beaglesaurus! I don’t feel like telling why just yet, I’ll give you some time to figure it out. My name is Andredactyl, & I have stolen everything you hold dear! Now, that doesn’t mean something stupid or lame like the love of your family or whatever sparse bullshit you had in your bank account… I stole something that any _real person_ values the most: I stole your _thunder_! When you lose all your thunder, no one will like you when they meet you! You lose all forms of natural charm! It will show you who your friends & enemies are. What your family really cares about. It’s going to be real challenging, I’m sure! You’ll find out who loves you at their core & who are the tempted, the foolish, the unknowing & those who just liked you for being a _hero_! Let’s see what happens when your adoring fans flock away from you like birds flocking to the garbage barge of my superior ability! Every single thing you’ve done in life is now mine! Every credit you’ve been given, every favor you’ve earned your whole career… it belongs to me now! Sure, it’s not the same as money or anything, but, uh… I don’t really need anything like that. I’m already richer than God! You… well, let’s see if you can get back on your feet again. Using this…”

With this, Andredactyl drew a black metal Japanese katana sword covered in barbed spikes & with sharpened screws sticking out of the blade’s edge & glowing with an arcane light.

“You might think that I wanna test you for all this, but don’t get the hot word twisted with dumbass ears & idiot thoughts! I’m doing all this because I want to get _my_ revenenge & because I’m here to prove that being some plucky underdog doesn’t make you shit! I’m here to prove that my _money_ & my superior abilities prove that I’m the greatest pterosaur hero that has ever walked the Earth! Or flown over it, something you’re not too great at without your precious trench coat, are ya?”  
“How… do _you_ know about my favorite trench coat getting destroyed?” Beaglesaurus asks, inquisitive as a query could be.

“One of your adoring fans told me, _of course_! People are really easy to squeeze for info if you’re as good looking as me! That’s the thing exactly. Not only did you _lose_ all your thunder… it’s that _I took it_! Everything that made you merely great makes me astounding! Using my Moon Katana, which _I personally_ invented during my visits to the Red Planet! After _you_ foolishly abandoned the Moon-imōto to crash into Mars & started the Moonfall Incident, the Martians came to the surface. A genius like me just found it _so easy_ to manipulate the mail system & won the mail-in sweepstakes to become Ambassador of Mars from President Wecht! I concentrated the metals of the Moon-imōto itself into this blade & a few more sharp bits to make it hurt even more! But that’s not _too_ important. What really mattered was I was able to sit with the people who _really_ matter: a bunch of impoverished natives of Mars who were willing to cook up for me the great & delectable taste that is Martian Paella. The mystical spices associated gave me the power I use _even now_ to ensure everyone knows that I’m _better than you_! But anyways, with the power of the Moon Katana, I infected four celebrities to become the Four Kings of Spookiness to wreak havoc across Neo-Oakland! So, if you want your thunder back, you’ll have to earn it back! The hard way that _poor_ people have to! I’m giving you one week to kill all four of them or your thunder may _never_ come back! You want your adoring fans & love from the city back? Then you’ve gotta find yourself four unstoppable monster people & slay them each, since I know _all to well_ that they won’t let you live alive & stay living to tell people about it! You think four _freaks_ are gonna want you helping them _without_ your thunder? Get real, get bent & get lost! For now, how about I just…” he said, taunting Beaglesaurus at every angle, before he opened the deck umbrella & was carried off on the sweet-smelling southern wind.

Standing on the roof of his favorite sandwich place, Andredactyl was clearly going to try his very best to ruin him one way or another. If it meant becoming gritty & hard-boiled once more to save his crimefighting career (which was already somewhat tarnished what with the recent events going down,) then he was going to have to do it the hard way, even without his trench coat! Andredactyl disappeared into the middle distance as Beaglesaurus snickered, realizing the new “hero’s” mistake & began eating his fries he left on the table. They were cold & soaked with pickle brine & a touch of aioli from his seductively scrumptious sarnie. He ate the sandwich soon after as he looked out, wondering what horrors had come down upon his beloved hometown… A man approached him & weakly asked with a weary face.

“Oh uh, can I borrow like four drops of blood?”

Beaglesaurus, ever the helpful fellow, let him use a quick lancet to collect about four drops on a piece of paper & strolled off, giving Beaglesaurus like $17 in quarters! Perhaps things were looking up _just_ a bit after all…


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter II — _Monster Quest — The Noxious Werewolf Wastoid_** or **_The Actua_ _lly Agreeable Cannibal & the Men Who Love Him So_**

Baka was currently out fishing with her older sister, Carmen Sandiego, as she left her younger sister, Leticia Rowan Dram Hugosi Nordin, left him a card in his mailbox, because she didn’t feel like getting too involved with Beaglesaurus’ nonsense shenanigans & legged it around the corner to eat $20 worth of baked beans with a regulation sized teaspoon. While she slurped the unheated beans, she watched intently as Beaglesaurus checked the mail & promptly threw out about four ads & the bullshit pack of coupons that were never really that helpful (or when they were, they were already expired or the jerks stopped carrying the Mozzarella Chicken!) & opened the card with one finger, reading its interior:

“I have found reports of a creature that has been eating human flesh & has had a terrible smell of cooking flesh coming from his house. You may need to do a little walking to get there. He moved out here from Alberta before Hogan laid the Literal Atomic Leg Drop on them (and also because Gov. the Butcher made LSD legal here too.) He should probably be doped up so much on his own that he won’t be too much of a fight unless he’s particularly tough to cut. Baka said that she hopes you do a good job & told me to give you some travel fare to get there, but she doesn’t tell me what to do & I don’t feel like giving you all my smokes money.”

Beaglesaurus thought that she was being highly facetious, making a joke, or possibly being affected by his severe lack of thunder & related amounts of charisma & mojo. He thought inwardly about the consequences of the situation. Was anything that Andredactyl said true at all? Did he really have some mystical powers that stole his inherent likability to the public? If he were as shifty as he truly thought he was, he could’ve just _hired_ all of these girls to flock around him. There wasn’t exactly any real evidence that he was affected at all. What was even really going on? Did Andredactyl truly hold any power? Were the Four Kings of Spookiness real even or was it all an elaborate rich boy’s prank to make Beaglesaurus look a complete dipshit? It was a possibility. However, if something _was_ eating people in the Greater Neo-Oakland Metropolitan Area, it was probably a good way to take some time to whittle down the afternoon & to restore order to the populace. Surely Leti couldn’t have been involved with Andredactyl… she wasn’t into guys, no matter how theoretically smexy they could possibly be, but was it just… challenging. But on the other hand…

If he beat these four monsters, dragged them singlehandedly to justice and/or slew each of them, he’d be _even more of a hero_. The possible limitation of their existence could be enough. He was doing his best &, even if they weren’t real, they’d certainly be a quest to solve! And if he didn’t find them (because none of them may not be real,) he would certainly be shaking the tree & catching whatever criminal elements would fall out! It was obvious that Robosaurus 2.0 wouldn’t be able to pick up the slack anymore just now. But now… now, he could break down on them. Smash the elements of crime with ease! He was invigorated & began throwing his tail in a circle & leapt from the roof of his house to get good air time & glide as far as he could without his trench coat. He noted next month that he would need to go & get another one. Flitting his way over America’s Canada’s Wonderland, he spotted the Vortex & gasped as he heard screaming below.

Realizing this would happen commonly, he swooped past it all & landed in downtown Georgina as he heard more likely violent screaming. Rushing around a corner, he heard the sickening sound of something biting through flesh around the corner of the Crimson Barn Theatre (the Former Red Barn Theatre had been rebuilt again with a shinier hue, befitting its new name.) Stalking around the edge, he saw a bloodthirsty beast, over 8’ in height, all muscle, all sinew & all teeth. A werewolf stood before him. It opened its blood-soaked jaws & roared in his face, getting small flecks of what was almost certainly human tendons on Beaglesaurus’ face. Drawing it off of himself, he flicked it off & looked the beast straight in the eyes, demanding its obedience, like a dog stared down another. He picked one hand to the beast’s throat, only for tearing claws to rain down upon his shoulders. It would be sure to rip him apart were he not the cyborg he now was once again. He groaned in pain as he whipped a steel-tempered leg into the werewolf’s. The beast fell hard with its jaw colliding to the ground as Beaglesaurus unleashes a vicious axe-kick, violating the sanctity of owning a left hip before twisting to swing his heavy metal tail into his legs, hoping he would stay down. However, the beast gripped into the ground, hair bristling with anger as the monster crouched, flinging it’s injured legs behind it to grip the earth. It flew over Beaglesaurus with a speed unseen. It disappeared into the night as Beaglesaurus chased it towards Lake Simcoe. The beast would’ve splashed down or landed in a tree, making certain noise… yet it didn’t. It was gone.

It wouldn’t be until daybreak that Beaglesaurus would begin his hunt anew. It also wasn’t until then that he had looked on the back of the notecard to find that there was an _address_ for Aurora & began to charge up all his energy to summon a taxi to drive him out there. Following the address via Yotta Maps, he found it was the old Hillary House & Koffler Museum of Medicine, a historic house with a bunch of early 19th century stuff lying about. It seemed that the werewolf was presumably holed up in there. It smelled like something foolish & aloof about indeed by which, of course, it is meant that it smelled entirely like the fresh, yet hard stank of that sweet Mexican herb, marijuana. The stench of Classic Hash (which had been replaced since 202X) with the utterly superior Weed 3. Clearly, this was a nostalgic user who didn’t mind too much to the state of their lung health, spinal fluid amounts & generally how their brain & ability to remember were doing. Carefully making his way in, Beaglesaurus kicked the door in succinctly & threw a jagged piece of stone directly down the hallway to make sure there was no one standing in his direct path. Smoothing out his favorite green mesh shirt, he smiled daringly into the nothingness. A wafting cloud of noxious mildly green gaseous substance that smelled similar to a smoke of thick Mary Jane’s grass! Waving away the smelly cloud of skunkweed, Beaglesaurus slowly found it emanating from the back doorway. Gripping the doorknob, he twisted it with his hand & then, turned it with all of his fingers & before he could believe that he was doing it, he opened the entirety of the door by pushing it forward.

After the smoke of many resinous pipes & rather a sticky stem flowed out of the room in curling puffs, the source of it soon was made clear. Beaglesaurus picked up an entire towel that was clogging the short space underneath the door (mostly due to it not doing enough to actually stop the voluminous onslaught of lung abusive toke fumes) & whipped it around a few times in a sweeping circle, clearing the air that little much more before he snapped on the lights. A scraggly older man reclined in a pink Ultimate Slanket (now complete with pockets that don’t rip off!) His hair was dragged from encompassing his eyes due to some amount of overly sticky product & a woven fabric hairband holding it back. Below his bushy hair, his tanned skin looked like a thick Moroccan leather & a similarly bushy salt & pepper beard shagged around his lips & chin. He drew an overpriced water pipe from his lips & blinked slowly behind a pair of thick glasses.

“Oh… hey man…” he said, decidedly turning his lips back to the pipe & lighting up another gust of psychedelic zephyr into his strained lungs, “What’s good?”

“Do you know where to find the wild beast, wise old man?”

“Wild Beast? Man, Dave’s not here…”

“Who’s Dave?”

“Ah man, Dave isn’t here…”

“Who is he?”  
“Who?”  
“Dave!”  
“Dave’s not here.”

“I don’t care about Dave! Where have you been the last 24 hours?” he asked seriously of the elderly smoker, joker & most than likely midnight toker.

“Man, I don’t remember the last 24 _minutes_ , bro. Hey, you can’t make me a bagel, can you?”

“Will you answer more questions if I do & move out of this room to the kitchen, at least?”  
“Yeah, I should get out of here for a minute, I need some milk for this cotton mouth anyways.”

The old man got to his feet, revealing heavy bruising on his legs & torn clothing stained heavily in what certainly looked a lot like dried human blood. Beaglesaurus decided to not ask about it just yet & began regretting not bringing anything particularly silvery with him to go about more adequate werewolf justice to be meted about. He began tossing his ass in a circle to sputter him out of the room & spinning a bit of the remaining tendrils of hot herbal vapor out of the room still. When he looked back, the elderly fellow was standing inside his otherwise empty fridge, necking down the contents of a bottle of milk. When Beaglesaurus cleared his throat to get his attention again, he sputtered himself & spilled milk comically into his beard & down his blood-stained chest.

“Oh, my bad, you want some?” he asked, holding out a generally empty bottle that he had certainly smeared his resin-caked lips on literal seconds ago.

“No thanks… Why are you covered in blood?”  
“Oh, that’s my roommate, buddy. That Dave is a laugh and a half. See, long time ago, Dave gave me some free peyote & even though it looked a little like some starfruit I saw him slicing up earlier, I went on a vision quest that told me I had to leave Alberta. So for 40 days & 20 nights, I wandered out from my home province & settled in Manitoba during the war. Seeing that things were going pretty south when Alberta was wiped off the face of the Earth by a muscle brained meathead with a coke problem, I decided maybe coming back to America was for the best & I settled out here! So, here I am!”

“And the blood?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re covered in blood,” Beaglesaurus again instructed, lightly tilting the man’s head down to see the blood splattered on his chest.

“Oh… OH! That’s a lot of blood! That’s not yours, is it?”

“It’s not mine.”

“Is it mine?”  
“I doubt it. Do you… usually black out at night & wake up places you don’t understand?”  
“Yeah, man! That’s how most Wednesdays go for me. Kind of a routine by now. It is pretty interesting how that goes…” It was Saturday today.

“Did it happen _last night_?”

“Did what happen?”

“Did you black out last night?”

“Ah, once or twice, I think. When?”  
“Around 9pm”

“Which day?”  
“Friday. Yesterday.”  
“Yesterday was _Friday_?! Ah man, I forgot to pick up my dry cleaning!”

“When were you supposed to pick it up?”

“I think back in March…” he noted, picking a crumpled ticket out of his pocket & unfurled it, revealing it wasn’t from this decade.

“I think this place turned into a Zaxby’s.”

“On 3rd?”

“Yeah, they got such good sauces.”

“It’s a nice day when you got a basket of Zaxby’s!” They both nodded in quiet respect for the everspreading fried chicken masters.

“But anyways, what were you doing last night around 9?”  
“Ah man, I remember being really hungry… and then I wandered outside, but I forgot my wallet. So…” he started walking to the door to reenact this in motion, “Then I walked back to my room & found my wallet on the nightstand.” He picked up a theoretical wallet in pantomime as he said this & continued: “Then I put it in my pants pocket & then I thought I should put a shirt on…”

Beaglesaurus decided to try killing him as a human to see if this could perhaps end the curse of the silver moon that made men monsters when the moon is full in the sky and the wolfsbane blooms.

“Oh, I think I remembered seeing a lady in a green shirt…”

“A green shirt?!”

“No, a green shirt,” the old man corrected as he started loudly opening a bag of Sun Chips & began dumping shake enabled white cheddar popcorn topping into the bag & started loudly rattling it about to evenly coat them, not unlike the indelicate process that aids the invention of Churros, “Yeah, she was about this tall with black hair that was long and straight, came down to about here…” he said, showing a hand at the right side of his chest. “I think she was trying to say something about a wolf in the area. Think she might have been hitting on me. Then I just thought I was getting hungry and… yeah, not much after that!”

“Do you think that perhaps you turned into a werewolf by night sort of thing?”  
“Me? A werewolf? Man, the moonlight touching me mostly turns me into a Deadhead. Or a Jack Russell, they look like they have a fun time in the moon’s shine, ya know?” he said as he began doing a small, unimpressive dance.

“I’m starting to doubt it too…”

“But yeah, then I woke up, had a bad stomachache & had something on my face. That was around 2pm, then I got to smoking to help myself feel a bit better.”  
“And what happened?”

“Oh, I felt a _lot_ better! But, uh, then I ate about four little mushrooms & then I kinda spaced out. Anyways, then you showed up, Robot Jones. You remember that show? _Robot Jones_?” he said, holding his arms out at short perpendicular angles & saying the last in a monotone voice, recalling the end of the theme song of the cult classic _Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?_ (which only achieved its goal of explaining the robot’s whereabouts in its Emmy-winning fifth season in 201X)

“Vaguely… it was… before my time…” Beaglesaurus said, staring off into the middle distance, thinking of his regrettable time he spent getting into a fight on his 12th birthday instead of watching the series finale. It had been one of life’s greatest sorrows when it soon after became lost media due to a combination of a broadcasting mistake & a fire at the homes of every person attempting to record it simultaneously.

“Bummer, dude… Anyway, I was thinking of…” his eyes dilated intensely as all the mushrooms kicked in at once & he turned around, glaring suspiciously at the bottom corner of his kitchen & getting on his hands & knees to begin shouting angrily to what his speech implied was a very tiny man planning to saw the legs off of his chairs, “Do not _start with me_! I cannot believe we let you _live here_ & you just decide to _betray me_ by ruining my chairs! This is madness and you are crazy, man! You, your wife, your kids, all of you need to leave now! I am going to call the cops the minute I finish hiding everything & I have done you _too many favors_!” he said thereof, pointing an angry finger at the man that clearly did not exist by a general understanding of reality, which was certainly the case here.

Beaglesaurus further decided that since he was clearly capable of it & it needed doing, he slowly gripped both sides of the seemingly vapid of mind beast he had fought so intensely the night before. Never had he experienced a heat of battle particularly harder than this! To think that in the end, it was a man of such simple pleasures almost an insult to his warrior’s beating heart. Nodding dramatically, he twisted, killing him with a single sharp tug of directions many. It needed to be done. Or so he thought. As the crimson sunset danced its way into Beaglesaurus’ eyes, he closed them because that was really way too bright. But directing away the brilliance of the midsummer’s glare into the eyes of our hero, a form of great mass stepped forward. In the newfound shadow of his might, he saw the beast he had fought that night before. It seemed that the night was no barrier to the modern werewolf. He spilled a bag of groceries on the ground as a can of soup rolled to tap against Beaglesaurus’ Converse running shoe & an orange rolled into the old man’s beard. The Werewolf stood tall & mighty all as we was before, stilling dripping with wet blood as he shook his head is disbelief.

“By Gods…! You’ve killed him! This is the price of my cursed hunger! My dark past has taken all from me & this is no exception… All those years ago, I took on the curse of the werewolf to save the man I loved from certain doom that the spirits foretold he would undergo. Thus, I was able to give him a vision to escape Alberta before the Not So Great Thing That Happened There. I had only told him my feelings about him three weeks ago. We were due to be married in the winter! We could’ve been Mr. David the Werewolf & Mr. Thomas Chong. But, it was always too much. Moving from town to town since Manitoba was nothing new to an old hippie like him, but it was merely me not being able to better myself or march west to Alaskalumbia & petition the Superior Necromancer for the removal of this awe-inspiring curse. I guess I just let my instincts get the better of me. I would lose myself in the deadly freedom of slaying. I would break through my life of holding things together & let loose in life! And this… this has become the price of my crimes. He’s done nothing. I gave him a kiss goodnight when he woke up after passing out from eating too much Zaxby’s & must’ve gotten some on him. I need to leave. I… need to be away from this…” he said, growing quieter as he told his story of pain & effort.

Beaglesaurus hung his head in shame at the actions that had happened in this remarkably unfortunate sequence of events happening & the way they had done so. Had he waited only minutes more, he would have found the true answers to his current branch of this generally impersonal quest. Dave the Werewolf returned to his human form. As he did, the police soon arrived & he confessed to it all. Broken, ashamed, & confused at what life had to hold, Beaglesaurus left Georgina. Approximately twelve miles back to home, Andredactyl swooped down near the gates of America’s Canada’s Wonderland & laughed at him.

“Where the hell did you find a _werewolf_?! I didn’t even _make_ a werewolf for you to fight! Ha! You ignorant failure of a hero! I’ll have to make it _easy_ for you, won’t I? Let’s see… I’ll put one due north from here. Look for the Creature of the Black Lagoon back in Neo-Oakland, the Butter Vampire in Kearney, the Invisible Man in Collingwood & the Low-Key Vampire King in Peterborough. Here, I made paintings!” Andredactyl pretentiously declared as he dropped four painted portraits.

The Creature was clearly more corpulent than the one in the films & wore a pair of thick glasses. The Butter Vampire looked similarly like a woman of elder age & of less than tasteful clothing choice, hair color & demeanor. The Low-Key Vampire King, as was to be expected, just kind of looked like a normal guy, with little defining features. The Invisible Man was clearly a mockery, since there was just a background painted on it. Beaglesaurus swung his tail to whip it back at him as Andredactyl performed a standing roundhouse in the air to tear it in half, smirking down at the Archduke of the Skate Park with a gusto not seen by people who make less than $500K per quarter. He flew off with a tearing sonic boom as Beaglesaurus picked up some change from his pocket to take the bus back home, having gotten pretty tired of dealing with this shithead. On the way back to town, a skinny fellow with high cheekbones & particularly sallow complexion asked if he could borrow four or five drops of blood & Beaglesaurus didn’t answer, since he was taking a nap. The man went ahead & borrowed some anyways, collecting more than the requested amount on a wrinkled pack of Zig-Zags drawn from an all too thin coat pocket.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter III — _Monster Quest_ **— **_The Creature T_ _hat Took_ _Neo-Oakland by Surprise_** or **_The Hunting of the Sna_ _rky Butter_ _y_ _Daywalking Demimonde_**

Arriving back in town & only mildly bleeding from a hole in his right arm, a sluggish Beaglesaurus churned himself out of his seat after clutching at the plastic-coated cord to stop the bus. Trudging his way upward, he sighed to himself & slumped out, his shoes barely feeling the pavement before he fell over onto particularly dewy grass nearby. It had been a hell of a day & perhaps the combination of a somewhat significant level of blood loss & heavy emotional stress had been enough. He rolled onto the front lawn of someone he definitely didn’t know & enjoyed the feeling of the wet grass against his skin. Though this was sure to leave some marks on his favorite green mesh shirt, he was too tired to care just then. It was some couple hours before he awoke & felt mildly refreshed, but also as if he were slowly having warm biscuits rubbed against his face due to having rolled over onto a warming sidewalk now heated from the midday sun. Sitting up, he decided that it was probably best to look to the lightly bleeding hole in his arm & walked downtown to find a way to see if he could find that local monster first & foremost. He decided to get a snack first as he shambled his way into an elevator at the AN Tower (formerly the CN Tower, shoddily renamed after the annexation of Neo-Ontario. It had been years past since he began to visit the cherished Neo-Oakland landmark &, like most kids, was trained to have no fear of heights due to consistent exposure to the tallest structure in the whole of the Western Hemisphere.) As an usher proceeded to roll his prone body out into the Main Pod & began dragging himself to his feet to make it to the 360 Restaurant (the caffeine hoses available now at the Horizons Cafe were _not_ thought to be helpful when he was already suffering from low blood-pressure.)

Using his tail to drag himself into a booth, he sat up & soon ordered a fine tuna melt & had a tall glass of Powerade to help make himself a little more peppy & significantly more hydrated. He voraciously devoured the sandwich after it became a temperature that wasn’t sure to scorch his tongue into a piece of charred meat. He ordered a second & similarly inhaled it like so much air inhaled into his lungs to breathe. Sated by a second tuna melt entering his stomach, he gulped down another glass of Powerade taller than his head. Taking a soft sigh of relief, he decided to stick around, hoping to use the rotating restaurant’s general ability to see if he could spot this ghast Gillman before he got up to any gregarious games of gruesomeness. It did not take long to find him. This was particularly because after ¾ of a revolution in the 360 Restaurant, he saw the Creature at the Bar, flanked on both sides by attractive women. Turning around on the rotating stool, a man of formidable size & questionable strength was shown, covered in thick scales that covered his body. His thick lips had turned green & small fins had sprouted up along his body in places that made it look like they would aid well in swimming, diving & leaping dramatically out of the water. What could be seen as exotic was clearly being done by these thirsty women, though Beaglesaurus was not one to question taste. He was certainly a wide man & had large glasses that hugged against his larger cheeks. He snickered obnoxiously as he poured a shot of expensive Scotch whiskey into one of the flayed gills on the sides of his neck. He proceeded to cough & hack for about a minute before he sat back up.

“I… hadn’t actually tried that before… I guess I can’t drink through these…” Creature from the Black Lagoon Wayne Knight noted aloud.

The ladies laughed as if this were some fine society joke & gave him mild shoves of affection before they started stroking at his chin & shoulders.

“Now now, ladies! There’s enough of me to go around for plenty! Strength & stamina abounds are mine now that I’m a gill-man! I never thought about it, but now all my _mass_ has taken me from being a man of mere girth to being a _gill-man_ of terrifying strength!” Creature from the Black Lagoon Wayne Knight announced, standing up triumphantly!

However, afterwards, he just back down & then took another shot. Beaglesaurus waited another 20 minutes, watching him drink & flirt mildly with the women before he got up & was approached by a man in a black suit & sporting sunglasses. He reached into his jacket, pulling a handgun, only for Creature from the Black Lagoon Wayne Knight to puff his cheeks out. Making a cross face, his newly squamous body popped the lenses out of his glasses & he began to vibrate with either power or gratuitous effort. Slowly, a small white spine appeared from between his eyes & fired out at the man, who looked rather disconcerted, if not internally frightened (or at minimum, somewhat grossed out.) The spine struck the man in his gun-wielding hand & he fell over, his body turning a glowing argent hue as foam poured from his mouth. There were uncomfortable noises associated with the body after death & Beaglesaurus had seen enough, stepping up with a butter knife in hand, flipping the mildly serrated eating utensil in a way he personally thought was at least cool, if not a little intimidating.

“Ah, another one of these types. I’ll _humor_ this one, Janice… Look lad, what has brought you to my domain? You’ve already seen it, I can kill you in less than a minute. Let’s just… talk about this like normal folk, eh?” he offered, now holding a wine glass between both hands (the common method proved to be difficult as became obvious to his widely webbed fingers, “Well now, I’m Wayne Knight. One fortnight ago, a young man with green hair stabbed me in the right buttock with a mystical blade! It would have hurt more if I didn’t pass out soon after. When I awoke, it was dark out. The world was spinning & I felt a sudden urge to dash! I legged it out toward Central Park & down the Ramble like Dustin Hoffman running from modern dentistry & dove sharply into the Lake! I felt renewed & slept in the Lake for the night. When I roused myself again, I found myself had changed! I was a Creature of the Black Lagoon! Or er… I suppose it’s more like _Lagoon City_ , huh?” he chortled at his own joke & adjusted his glasses, despite their complete lack of function.

“Anyways, this was reported to _the Mayor_ & he decided this was a fine excuse to have me executed! He’d _always_ hated me & that day was no different! Mayor Seinfeld sent his goons to rough me up & dragged me to his office! Ever since he killed Michael Richards for the still _unproven_ disappearance of Jason Alexander, I knew he’d come for me next! Every since he became Mayor, he’s gone mad with power! He decided that being a Creature of certain Lagoon origins, I no longer had inalienable human rights & announced he was going to just have me guillotined in Times Square… I… I didn’t mean to fire. It was the first time it had ever happened! The pressure charged through me! My blood was boiling! Who was he to decide who lives & who dies?! I’m telling you, this is a conspiracy! A manhunt! Ever since then, I’ve been on the run from the RSA’s agents!”  
“What about Gov. Stanley? Couldn’t he just pardon you out of this?”

“There would have been no time! He’s out for blood! Or at least… he was… It doesn’t matter now, Deputy Mayor Culkin is still intent on catching me! You wouldn’t believe the size of the bounty! So, I took the train up to Rochester & swam & swam & swam until I opened my eyes & when I emerged again, I was on the torrid shores of Gravenhurst! I made my way back here, but Culkin’s men are still after me! They’re not ready for all out war! I’ll show these fuckers who’s boss!” he said, now fuming and foaming from the right side of his mouth.

“I’ll see what I can do to get in contact with the authorities. Just because a loon like that _damned_ Andredactyl turned you into —”

“Andredactyl? Oh, I _love that guy_! He’s the best! I just got in town, but he’s the hit of Neo-Oakland! I’m sure he’s gonna track her down soon!”

“Track down… who?”

“You don’t watch TV, kiddo? He’s been streaming for the last 72 consecutive hours on his hunt for the Butter Vampire of Kearney!”  
“Kearney? Why is someone stalking Neo-Ontario’s Biggest Smallest Town?!” he implored of him, suddenly all filled with a deep inner rage that someone would harm the sleepy town.

“Easy pickings? Who can say? Maybe they like the atmosphere? But either way, he’s encountered her once so far. She almost bit off his finger! She’s a nasty one, that one!”

“ _GIVE ME BACK MY DOG_!” a voice called, angrily.  
  


Emerging from behind the bar, the intense glare of character actor Michael Shannon bore down on the back of Creature from the Black Lagoon Wayne Knight. It had been four weeks since his personal rival, character actor Mike Hagerty, had suddenly acquired a dog that looked _very suspiciously_ similar to his own Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Bradlington. He had gone out & bought a dog microchip reader & was in the process of breaking into Hagerty’s home _just to be sure…_ or at least _after_ he wrote “MY DOG” in giant letters on his living room wall with a fillet knife. Finding out it was indeed his dog, he had hugged Bradley so close… Just close enough that he didn’t see Hagerty coming up behind him with a Ruger LCR. The click of the hammer alerted Shannon to danger & he raised both of his entirely human arms the whole way upwards, still holding his dog in both hands though.

“So you’ve found out my little scheme, eh, Shannon? Well, maybe it’s time for our little games to end. Put the dog down, Shannon. Unless you want to eat… this entire jar of mayonnaise!” he had said, snatching the dog from his arms & lobbing the jar of less than appetizing jar of Hellman’s

It had been worse than he could have imagined. The mayonnaise had been tainted horridly with blue & red food coloring packets to make the already distasteful whole condiment that much less edible to the palate of a gentleman like he. Shannon slumped forward as Hagerty backed against the wall, petting his neighbor’s dog with one hand & aiming the remarkably small gun at Shannon. Michael Shannon, tears bitter with the smell of oil & vinegar, began hoisting the mayonnaise into his mouth. After three more handfuls, he looked up from his shameful position on his knees to find that Hagerty was gone. He had been following Hagerty’s trail for weeks across the Neo-Oakland Greater Metropolitan Area. Ever since Hagerty had escaped with Shannon’s copy of _Korn III: Remember Who You Are_ by disguising himself as a pantomime horse, he knew very well that this piscine fellow was _surely_ that same man! Carefully moving a few bottles aside, Shannon strolled his way over the unconscious former bartender he had attacked in preparation. Behind the bottles, an M61 Vulcan rotary cannon, the largest gun he could get his hands on in such short notice sat, a blinking green light on top.

“I’ve rigged this baby up to fire if I let go of this button! **NOBODY MOVE**! You’re _mine_ now, Mike Hagerty! Take off the mask & face me like a man!”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about…” Creature from the Black Lagoon Wayne Knight uttered quietly, holding his hands forward in a “please calm down” type of manner.

“Where is Bradley?”

“ _Who_ is Bradley?”

“ _ **Why**_ is Bradley?! I don’t care anymore! Tell me where you’ve hidden my Bradley &… I might not let go of this button!”

“I don’t have your dog or Bradley! Is Bradley your dog? Come on, we can talk about this! I’m not whoever you think I am! Look here!” He went for his wallet that he foolishly didn’t realize weren’t on his squamous new form, “I… seem to have misplaced it…”

The women that were cooing over Creature from the Black Lagoon Wayne Knight had briskly powerwalked their way away from this unstable man looking for a Spaniel on the AN Tower’s favorite eatery. Beaglesaurus began carefully scooting himself by a single centimeter every few seconds, most specifically when Shannon would grab his head & scream in an inner torment that tore at the muslin gauze of his already weakened mental state. It was more difficult a maneuver when he found the bar was separating him from any direct action he could prevent. Michael Shannon sniffed harshly & took a deep breath.

“Okay. Hagerty…”  
“I’m telling you, I don’t know Mike Hagerty! We were in _V.I. Wershawski_ , but I never spoke with him on set! I saw him eat a hot dog across the street once & it looked disgusting! Please… I hate him as much as you do!”

“You… you do?! Thank goodness! I need your help to find my dog, Bradl—”

He was cut off as his thumb had lifted in sudden surprise of Creature from the Black Lagoon Wayne Knight & he had moved in for a fraternal bonding hug. This was, as expected, a poor choice. A hail of bullets struck Shannon in the back & then collided into the beautiful gill-man’s portly personage. He groaned dramatically as he wandered back & fell through the shattered remains of the window. It took all of several painful seconds to hit the ground. Beaglesaurus had managed to smack the barrel at the last second. It would’ve only been one or two shots that would’ve hit either of them! This thought rattled through his head as he spun his tail to slowly glide to the ground. He found him breathing slowly as he lifted his head up to see if he could find out something to help him.

“I don’t know how he figured it out… The gill-man’s perennial weakness to bullets, damn. Even one can completely throw off my homeostatic balance… I” he coughed loudly & rolled onto his side, spitting out the bullet as he gave Beaglesaurus a thumbs-up, “I d-don’t think that I’m going to make it, new friend whose name I never learned…”

“My name is Beagle… or Beaglesaurus. Don’t worry. I’m going to find the man who did this to you & stop him.”  
“ _The Archduke of the Skate Park_?”

“One & the same” he said with a soft smile.

“Damn… maybe you were… the real hero all along… Find the Butter Vampire… I remember he whispered to me the secret to defeating her… You have to stab her in the heart! Like a… completely… normal… vampire…” he said, then made a loud noise as green goo pooled in his mouth & his cold-blooded heart beat no longer. He would be missed by many… Michael Shannon was shot ironically in his dominant index finger, meaning he could never reliably shoot someone again _without_ using a remote-controlled turret.

Beaglesaurus would waste no more time this chapter, at least. He took the elevator back to the 360 Restaurant, left a $40 tip due to the glass getting everywhere & jumped out from the broken open window once it was facing towards Kearney & took off, his tail spinning to start a slow glide downwards that would keep him aloft for hours. After an hour of high-speed velocity downward flight with the wind behind him, Beaglesaurus landed on the outskirts of Neo-Ontario’s coziest little town. It took little time with his robotic-enhanced legs for him to sprint easily through the tiniest town in the state until he took a break to neck down a Grape Fanta behind St. Patrick’s Roman Church. Naturally, he presumed a vampire, buttery or otherwise, would not be able to step on such hallowed grounds. After gulping down the purple elixir, he carefully skyhooked the bottle into a recycling bin & charged quick as he could down the main thoroughfare before skidding hard to slide around a corner. Finding little of note yet, he began climbing his way to the rooftops for a better view & began searching around. After another hour of this, he was still fast & loose with his justice & still just as empty-handed when he got to town (even less so with the Fanta gone) & he decided to go for broke & scope out the local bodega to get the hot skinny on this quaint hamlet.

Opening the door, he purchased a wooden spoon from the odds & ends section, a pocketknife, four Cow Tails & an Abba-Zabba & leaned one of his more human elbows on the counter to engender coolness & casualness in the face of danger.

  
“Anything new in town?” he asked, daringly. The clerk did not respond & blankly stared through Beaglesaurus, almost unaware that he was there, save for the part where he rang him up, though wordlessly, “Anything at all?”

“You… should… see… the… Mayor,” the lackluster lackey behind the counter offered in slow, stunted words that seemed like he was barely capable of stringing together the words. He continued to stare blankly against the far wall with his hands placidly placed on the counter, palms down. He had the quiet emptiness of a lizard basking in the Sun, but now in the dead of night.

“I suppose I… will…” he said as he picked up a Snickers carefully, wondering if he’d even respond to this.

As expected, he didn’t. Beaglesaurus stepped backwards in quick hops and just dumped four packs of butter sticks into his bag. The man still did nothing. Something was amiss indeed. No _true_ bodega owner would allow such frivolities to run rampant in their place of business. Beaglesaurus quickly pushed open the receipt printer, tearing off some paper, replacing it & then jotting down an IOU for roughly $70. He wasn’t about to go around just paying any afflicted drone if he could get away with it. Or at least not immediately. He took an access ladder to the roof & used his telescopic duo-vision of his cyborg eyes to look at the Mayor’s house, though this soon proved to be a feckless move. The Mayor’s home was clearly a larger house on a trailing hill. Dark clouds hanged about it from east to slightly more east, since the township was barely large enough to have particularly cardinal “sides.” From there, he could see _out_ of town easily. Spying at the manor, he leapt in a sudden corkscrew motion & began to spin his tail laterally instead of in a powerful whirling motion, which soon led him hovering forty feet above the bodega. His tail began to spin in longer circles, letting him slowly drag forward along the air, not too unlike an auto-gyro, moving closer to the large house. It was probably even too fast at that point, which was accented decently by how he had a sudden sharp crash into a third story window, sprawling himself across what looked like a drawing room, his body colliding both physically & emotionally into a pianoforte, making a comically loud noise before he began to get p & dust himself off.

Walking out into the hall, he found things just as deathly quiet as everything else in this almost historically simplistic village. Any _other_ time he destroyed most of the forward facing window of a stylized edifice as this, there was more than a little frustration to deal with concerning its owner. And smashing what certainly felt like an especially solid & presumably antique pianoforte garnered yet more indignation from the affluent consumers of such things. And yet! No one approached. No one was there to complain. Attempting to silently (or at minimum, swiftly) slide down the banister, he found that a sudden leap onto it only created a loud creak that only became worse & his tail ended up shredding a deep, cracking furrow in the railing. It was only through the consistent grace he could achieve as a skilled skateboarding genius that he was able to maintain balance & land on the ground softly. As he alighted to the first floor, there was a soft flicker of light in the distance. He dropped to the ground fast & began slowly crawling forward. An opponent armed with only a candle was already one hand short of prepared for battle & a low vantage point like this would make it that much easier to get the jump on them. Slithering his way across the floor, he soon found the figure was standing still. In the weak light of a now flickering candle, the visage of the Cake Boss Bartolo “Buddy” Valastro, Jr. smiling eerily in the almost complete darkness.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh” he groaned out in a high pitch. It didn’t sound particularly like a sound of surprise, “This… is… the… way…” he spoke, all too similar to the clerk at the singular bodega.

“The way to what?”  
“To…the…Dining…Room” he said before he turned around in short, shaky jerks.

“Is the Mayor there?”  
“Yes… dinner… is… being… served…” he said, words almost leaking out of his mouth like a faucet dripping at an irritably slow cascade, intent on keeping you from a good night’s rest.

It was a short while to arrive there due to the usually jovial baker’s short shuffles of his shoes. He didn’t even move like a puppet. He didn’t even move like a robot. He moved like all his joints were seizing up & his sense of balance looked as if it may have gone the way of the dodo years ago. It was less like a person possessed & more like someone being jabbed with pointy electrified needles, causing involuntary jolts of passingly ambulatory motion. If one saw a person like this on the mean streets of anywhere that wasn’t Kearney, one would be more than inclined to rush at them, since every step looked either painful or like he was _definitely_ going to fall directly onto his face. This shambling form that shifted about like a body ignorant of itself soon slapped his hand on a door & let out a loud moan that soon evolved into a spectacularly annoying wail with, most horrifyingly, an ever increasing amount of volume carrying it.

He slapped at the door four times, reaching as high as his arms could do so. Beaglesaurus helpfully used his left eye to release a spotlight of revelation upon his actions. He could see with the eye that wasn’t firing what would be a blindingly bright light otherwise that he was reaching towards a barrel lock at the higher left edge of the door. Beaglesaurus skidded forward & used his tail to lift himself that much more off the ground, elevating to just the right angle to have some leverage as he yanked down the thick slat of bent metal. With a loud CHONK, the Cake Boss made a somehow more irritating noise that only in comparison to the last one could ever contain the possibility of positivity to it. It was pitched high once more before Beaglesaurus slumped back to his shoes again. He would gripped the wailing fool’s mouth shut if he was not _very much so_ not willing to go about touching Buddy the Baker’s cheeks. It was no more help that the Cake Boss seemed to be almost uncontrollably drooling from both of his lips & most of his mouth. Beaglesaurus decided to help himself to the door & twisted it. It was still locked from here. To counterbalance this, Beaglesaurus merely twisted _harder_ until the doorknob merely wrenched itself from its moorings & soon loosed it upon an unsuspecting wall behind him. A notch larger than a divot was plunged into it, forever injuring the formerly proud wall’s internal, silent pride. He reached into the hole where once a doorknob dwelt a time & pressed his left Converse into the slab, smashing it open with a sharp kick.

Within, lit by four candelabras, sat a woman of pale complexion & terrifyingly frail form. She looked quite like a corpse, withered with age. Her skin looked like it could go up in the flames, its dryness was so visibly palpable. Stepping onto the table to assert dominance over what seemed like an anorexic socialite, he strolled to her & squatted low, looking her in the eyes.

“So… are _you_ the Mayor?” he asked, coarsely giving her a look of dismissive nature.

“She’s not the ruler of anything anymore…” a piercing Southern fried voice declared, certainly not from the mouth of the decrepit woman, “Mayor Ina Garten… the Barefoot Contessa, as you may know, was such a woman of enjoyment. All the oil, the sweat, the _juices_ that once flowed through her are all mine now… But I’m still _hungry_!”

In all of a sudden, the door was whipped backwards as if it were struck, though no person was seen doing such. It was like a quick burst of wind forcing it back the way it came. It slapped shut, but the force of the blow it was certainly dealt made it rattle on its hinges & then fall outward, leaning into the hallway violently enough to get the top of the door smashed into the wall.

“You can’t just go about trying your best around here. I came out here to stay barricaded in here, but that wasn’t powerful enough to keep you out. Are you the Hunter? That flashy boy with the bright green hair that _skewered_ me while I was eating a tasty meal of deep-fried sushi! Now, _no one_ interrupts my meals! And _everyone_ ends up being my meal!” the voice called out.

Dropping from the ceiling, the table was smashed by the Butter Vampire’s decisive left hand, a simple slap shattering it open. She cackled as she picked up a candle to her face & began to guffaw excessively once more. Much like the other two, Beaglesaurus was able to clearly identify the manic eyes & the cerulean rinse of bouffant hair that was all too indicative of Paula Deen. Her almost rigor mortis rictus opened, showing fangs pointing from out of the roof of her mouth, darting in & out like a snake’s tongue flicking out to taste the scent of prey. She began her deep-hearted chuckle again as she gripped the emaciated, gnarled form of the now late Barefoot Contessa & dragged her arm to her mouth. The fangs stabbed in once more & began to draw & twist all oils from her body, making it become that much more desiccated as the lifeless form, now empty of all forms of lipid within. Butter Vampire Paula Deen began hungrily putting the lit candles in her already gaping maw & began chomping them to pieces. She lurched forward, her sharp fingernails darting forward to tear into the wallpaper just under where Beaglesaurus’ left arm had barely shifted.

“Damn… sometimes I can’t… control the speed I move at! I can tell your will is far too heady to be so quickly assumed, torn, removed! It’s all new to me! You must give me a little headway when it comes to bottom out your body’s butter, ehohoho…” she spouted, dragging her claws back from the wall, unearthing them.

“You might find me a bit too thick to chew. I’ve got a low body fat content…” he remarked, as if this was a daring retort. It was easier to go about physically challenging her, twisting his tail around his front side to whip into her shoulder blades, sending her headfirst into the wall. Drawing out the bags of top level Kearney purchases, he freed the sticks of butter with a speed unheard of commonly from their thin waxy paper protectors. It was clear she would not wait too long now that the traps were well baited.

She quickly lifted her head, the drywall & wiring smashing backwards as she cackled in enjoyment. She rolled to the side, strafing at a speed even our Archduke of the Skate Park was a little amiss to catch fast. Her hands whipped to the farthest stick of butter & it entering her mouth was not even visible by human standards, her teeth merely gnashing a fine yellowed Irish butter between her chopping chatterers. The speed of its imbibition created a cloud of aerosol buttered gas that a close experience (were one to even _survive_ such a fatty miasma to the face, either emotionally or otherwise) would surely give the foolhardy inspector the quickest case of “popcorn lung” available. Her very breath was a danger now & Beaglesaurus was not keen to try scraping any of his mechanical parts for lardy deposits & used the flicking blade of the pocketknife to delicately plane a hunk off the end of the wooden spoon, leaving it a sharp implement of vampirical destruction. He chomped well into the chewy plastic binding of two of his Cow Tails, enjoying the creamy center inside the caramel cream lining around the spindly confection. Rushing forward, in a matter of seconds, he reached his fingers into his mouth, pulling loose the plastic wrapping fully spread from his lips & slapping the wet plastic onto Butter Vampire Paula Deen’s lard-bearing chops. With a move of similar speed, he drew the other sheet out from his mouth & slapped it into her face. The result was immediate: She was blinded & her mouth covered for just long enough that he could lift both legs up & drop kick her hard in the stomach. He hoped that the stomach may be just that limiting for a creature intent in such a way & found it at least challenged her balance, toppling her onto her back. Taking the opportunity, he used his teeth to tear open the wide edge of the Abba-Zabba, dragging the wrapper open & slapping it equally over her face once more as her teeth dragged along the thin barrier of sugary plastic. His fingers slid quickly apart as he felt a tension on the plastic, finding her darting fangs stabbing through it, though this only made the plastic draw more into her mouth This gave her a little more room for biting, but this was just the moment Beaglesaurus needed. Using the one hand to push her head backwards, rolling the heel of his palm to shove under her chin & lifted his other hand high, the snapped wooden spoon in hand. The sharp screeching cry that most people thought was an eagle, but was, at heart, a red-tailed hawk speared through both of Beaglsaurus’ entirely techno-organic ears, giving him some mild wincing. His moment of shock & attack had been ceased by this sudden hawk’s scream. To his further surprise, there was a crash above him as a swirling vortex of splintering wood & chips of tile floor were effortlessly tunneled atop him. Though it was enough to be deflected by a quick thrust of his arms into a circle, the further shock would continue to set in as more & more came so fast at him. With one hand, the figure descended from the burrowed out tunnel that was once the manor of the Barefoot Contessa (open now even through the roof) & drew forth an obsidian scabbard to smash Beaglesaurus in his dominant hand, knocking the broken wooden spoon from it.

Beaglesaurus reached out his other hand to grasp it, tightening his grip on it, only for his attacker to release it just as he went to pull it away, causing the Hypest Dude of Neo-Oakland (an award granted him by Gov. the Butcher after he saw him eat an intimidatingly large brisket sandwich out at Billford’s) to dip forward, his stance secure enough to not fall over completely. Looking up, he noticed very understandably who his newest opponent was. Andredactyl had appeared again.

“Well, I guess it had to have been the big house on the hill. I wasn’t really _too_ attached to this podunk piss-ant town anyways. It took you _this long_ to get here? To find her? I even gave you _hints_ on how to stop her & I guess you just _took so long_ that I got _bored_ of trying to hunt down the others. I guess it turns out creating an Invisible Man Rick Moranis was naturally going to make him hard to find, but I’m surprised that my other vampire couldn’t have gotten here faster! I was expecting there to be a union between the two, but I guess they just aren’t the type to get along…” he shrugged with both of his obnoxious shoulders upwardly.

As Butter Vampire Paula Deen hissed & released a loud screech of no painful auditory level quite, she took a raging double claw to her own face, ripping deep furrows along it on both sides in her impatience to remove the plastic prison pressing on her pate. Andredactyl leaned his head back & over his shrugging shoulders to give Beaglesaurus the acme of shit-eating grins & then rolled his eyes while his head turned back towards Butter Vampire Paula Deen.

“It would be pretty dumb of me to make a monster that moves faster than me… Don’t _idiots_ like your ass usually need a phenomenal amount of brainpower to get that the _obvious_ tactics won’t work? Why would I make a _normal_ vampire?! One that takes nothing but a piece of busted driftwood to break?”

Andredactyl dashed forward suddenly, lifting both legs back to press a knee drop onto Butter Vampire Paula Deen’s right arm, pinning her to the ground before he used his right arm to grind his right wing against her throat. Beaglesaurus angrily ground his teeth together, since he recognized that this tactic was _basically_ the same thing he did, but in a slightly more stylized manner.

“The real way you beat a Butter Vampire is the same way you stop a Hipster Frankenstein’s Monster or a Staunch Republican Marya Zaleska! You get out… a gun!”

Andredactyl snidely drew a relatively common Kimber Stainless Raptor II & ground it into Butter Vampire Paula Deen’s sternum. With a gurgling cry, she tried to reach over and claw at his hand with her own right as Beaglesaurus chewed his Abba-Zabba angrily as he stepped up to Andredactyl.

“That’s _real cute_ , you think you can stop me? It’s a _gun_. I know even _you_ aren’t fast enough to stop a point blank shot. This bullet is packed with artisanal kale! They say one shot from it can make someone a vegetarian for life… But with someone… in such an undead glut, I guess it might do something a little bit _diff_ —”

Before he could continue condescending to him, Beaglesaurus was standing chest to face against him. Andredactyl grinned again as Beaglesaurus put a hand on his head.

“This is all just a game to you, isn’t it? You don’t care how many people’s lives you ruin to get your kicks!” Beaglesaurus accused.

“ _Yeah_! That’s the point, dumbass! It got so boring seeing you _almost_ do a good job here, that I had to get in your way. I thought it would be more fun if, well, I just made sure you didn’t win at hunting _any_ of my monsters! It’s not really a competition, is it though? I mean, I already knew I was better than you in _any_ conceivable manner and the real problem is—”

“You…” Beaglesaurus began as he opened his entire mouth, leaning his head just over Andredactyl’s, putting him just out of his line of sight before continuing, “talk way too damn much…”

Andredactyl scoffed & fired his weapon. Butter Vampire Paula Deen made a low, guttural noise that echoed harshly through the hallways of the harried home. Her body soon began to shrivel up as butter squeezed out of every pore, leaving her now quite the husk of a person that she had already left at least _one_ person, although this one differed by being laid out in a filthy pile of quickly rotting brown grease. Even the butter that she had so hastily consumed was now impure leaking from her empty, mummified corpse. This, however, was not met so easily. Andredactyl was full of pride, though that was never new. But there was a small crack in his veneer now. In the time he took to close his eyes & opened his mouth to start bloviating about his own greatness & ability, Beaglesaurus had opened his mouth, pushing out the thick, tasty blend of taffy & peanut butter that was the abject enjoyment of an Abba-Zabba, letting it plop into Andredactyl’s deceptively overstyled haircut. Feeling the wetness on his crown, Andredactyl stuck out his tongue in utter contempt & shoved both of his hands together, squeezing it into his spiky lime green hair. Beaglesaurus stepped back & smirked at him.

“Good job,” Beaglesaurus offered & whipped his tail around to fly out of the hole in the mayoral manor.

Andredactyl attempted a sharp legged sweep, but Beaglesaurus was already propelling himself out. Rising to his black Crocs, he sneered & picked up the husk that once was the Butter Vampire Paula Deen & dragged it outside. As the sun rose, Beaglesaurus sat on the roof of the destroyed mansion & enjoyed the view. The singular crowd of Kearney, Neo-Ontario, stood aghast as a slow clap slowly started in the far distance, where the man from the bodega nodded in admiration & his clapping began to echo across town. Despite the admiration of a small population, Andredactyl was still internally furious & externally had taffy stuck in his hair. After wading to the stairway leading down from the manor, he unceremoniously dropped the remains to roll down to the bottom & began wading through the crowd with his arms raised high, so he could try to part their adoration from him. Stepping past them, he took off from the ground, flying at high speed, ignoring the cheering chants for his superiority, grace & handsome jawline. Beaglesaurus returned & paid the bodega man $70 to make up for the trouble. Biting into an Abba-Zabba once more & enjoys its smooth yet chewy taste, Beaglesaurus thought of the two escaping monsters and if his quest had really come to a close...


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter IV — _Monster Quest_ _Finale_ _—_ _Phantom Challenge Dance Rave at the Sunnybrook Terror House_** or **_Chainmail Barbecue Detour to Yorkdale Shopping Centre_**

Guy Fieri lifted the mighty bastard sword in both of his fingerless gloved hands, whipping it above his head in a circle as his right hand man, Tim Allen, continued grunting in a professed, exaggerated manner, not unlike some kind of ape.

“You can do it! Unleash your fury! Do what you must! If you let this _Roastie_ get what she wants, it’ll all happen! Steak won’t taste good! You’ll be dull & boring! Come on, let loose & _destroy her_! UGH UGH UGH!” Tim Allen angrily demanded.

Turning back towards him, Guy Fieri’s eyes widened. Standing five feet away, Beaglesaurus whipped her tail back & forth behind her. Though she knew that Guy Fieri was a noble man of pure heart & great gusto, the poisoned honey words of militant MRA Patriarch Tim Allen drove him to this foolishness of his. Decked out in chainmail, Tim pointed at Beaglesaurus once more.

“Destroy this wretched woman!”

It was 2pm then. At 1pm, Beaglesaurus was doing his daily full mall grind at the Yorkdale Shopping Centre & finished off at Yogurt Bonanza, enjoying a fine peanut-butter & banana smoothie. He added fourteen shots of protein to make sure it was excessively masculine & would help him build more muscle for the coming days & the inevitable battle soon with Andredactyl. Andredactyl had nailed a large novelty check on the Lobstersauruson House’s front door, telling him to meet him at Yorkdale where he would explain all. With there already being an altercation there, Beaglesaurus had decided to investigate. And now it was 1pm. Tim Allen & his MRA Renegades decided that their lazy demands for sandwiches, good times & backrubs for all men was a convincing argument for anyone that didn’t have to provide those to them any. What was worse, television food personality & Former Twin Governor of Ohio (his counterpart, Twin Gov. Drew Allison Carey, would become Mayor of Cleveland after asserting his dominance with an awkward dance that no one could look out, no less challenge) Guy Fieri had been drawn along to their ways with lies of the evils of females. This was especially odd that he had joined their twelve man march from the Nordstorm all the way across to the True Religion. It was at the time very same time of 1:12pm that Andredactyl crashed through the skylight above & spread his mighty wings to land on the food court terrace. On his back, there was a large cylinder of biotechnology that he drew forward & presented.

“I invited you here today while your Monster Quest still hasn’t finished to reveal the reason I’ve created such things! You weren’t _stupid_ enough to think that I wasn’t just _lying_ when I said it was to challenge you or just for cheap richboy pastimes. This is the real reason why. You let this happen!” Andredactyl proclaimed seriously as he opened one end of the cylinder. Within, Aridactyl’s head was sitting. Below it, her body was attached, but sealed in the biotechnology machine.  
“So! After your little getabout with _my_ superior sister, I found out that you bribed her with unlimited sweets to let you alone & _this…_ _this_ is what’s happened now! Eating nothing but Hostess Fruit Pies with their flaky crust & delectable real fruit flavors in a variety that astonishes all has inflicted her with… _Type 12_ Diabetes! Her pancreas looks like a green bean now & this complicated biomachine is the only thing that keeps her alive! Every day, she must enter this crucible of personal torment as it replaces her entire bloodstream with one with an appropriate amount of sugar! This process takes three hours every day & prevents my darling sister from accomplishing _real_ life goals like making money & spitting on you _skanks_!”

“It causes me intense & horrible amounts of pain & I blame you entirely for this…” Aridactyl said weakly, “This would never have happened if not for you & Andredactyl will continue his madcap revengens until the time where a cure can be found… Each challenge will be more difficult than the last & this one will show you just that…” she said, before coughing emphatically upwards. With her arms in the machine, this was a harsh display to release almost directly in Beaglesaurus’ face before Andredactyl sealed the container once again.

“To prove that you could never hold a candle to my sister, I had the boys in the lab put something together! Me, **Andredactyl _Gonzales_**!”

Andredactyl pulled out what looked like a flashlight surrounded by small triangular mirrors & snapped off the top of it, releasing a hazy gray beam of non-light that zazzled through most of Beaglesaurus’ semi-cybernetic digestive tract. Feeling energy pulsing through his body, he realized little particular change in his body. But within seconds, he could tell due to clearly alternatively appropriated body type & slightly higher voice… Beaglesaurus had become a woman!

“They didn’t tell me how long it takes to wear off! There’s no antidote, it’s just exposure really. And _oops_!” the snide socialite said as he snapped the rest of the device in half, “You won’t get any of your nerd friends to reverse-engineer this kind of hot tech! This is _top of the line_! I mean, _I_ could certainly get another one, but, heh… you already knew _that_! You can’t handle a world where you’re not the most important man in town!”

Confusion & rage coursed through Beaglesaurus entirely female veins as she screamed to the heavens, then finished her smoothie & carefully deposited the cup in the recycling bin. She resumed her loud screaming of anguish & regret at the supposed loss of identity that came with this newfound change. What did manliness of Beaglesaurus, adept man, have to challenge in this world when everything was completely different! Andredactyl took off to the skies again, smashing a farther, different area of the skylight above Yorkdale as Beaglesaurus thought of her new plight. With a body like this, could anything be achieved? He had no inkling to think that women were weaker than men or anything to that effect, his schoolyard battles with Aria were some of the best days he had! But it was his own abilities with a body unfamiliar that irked him so. Picking up her skateboard, she began to tentatively grind along the railing of the food court & followed it to the Nordstrom. Skulking above on the terrace, she spied down on the MRA Renegades chanting something far too sexist to repeat in written literature like this work of art, but let’s suffice to say it involved comparisons to the red-shanked douc & the demand of manual labor in at least one fashion or another. Encountering them, the battle began.

And that took about a half hour & led them back to 2pm, at the top of the elevator next to the Tumi, Inc., Guy Fieri was whipping his bastard sword above his head all that much still. Due to Beaglesaurus’ metallic body in a few choice places, 8 of the 12 MRA Renegades managed to shoot each other when small arms provided ricochet with ease. One of them ended up dropping his knife & playing the worst score at mumblety-peg. Beaglesaurus had, along the lines of this quick adventure, realized internally that gender is a construction of the mind & what one _feels_ is the important matter. No matter what body Beaglesaurus was in, as she now certainly well knew, the results were the same. Beaglesaurus was an unstoppable badass. In his fury, Guy Fieri dropped the sword & whirled around, gripping Tim Allen by both of his entirely human shoulders with both of his meaty fingerless gloved hands & gripped with all of his fingers therein. Tears poured from his face as he nodded to Beaglesaurus.

“You really taught me a lot about life, Beaglesaurus! With these short minutes shared between us, it was more than clear that I had a lot to learn about women & their capabilities! I’ve been married since 199X, so I should’ve figured it out a lot sooner myself. I blame myself for this attack. These militants were rallied up by my boisterous nature & how much I know how to _get down to business with a tray of nachos_!” he said as his sunglasses fell down onto his face in a daring manner, “I’m gonna just say this here: Tim Allen! No one can truly expect my loyalty when a fine roast-beef sandwich is out of the question! It’s demeaning to refer to women like slaves or something you need to conquer & your totally bogus ideals of masculinity are toxic in… _nature_!” As he unleashed this word of finality, he jumped backwards with Tim Allen in his arms into the open elevator shaft of the Yorkdale Shopping Centre’s east elevator. This daring self-sacrifice would become less impressive when they crashed into the top of the elevator car & landed on the floor, having barely fallen seven feet before their fall was broken.

Dusting herself off & then dusting her hands off in a manner to represent that this adventure was completed once the actual police showed up & arrested the MRA Renegades. It would be another forty minutes before Beaglesaurus’ body returned to normal & he shrugged at the marginal physical changes. Shuffling out towards the Cineplex Cinemas Yorkdale, he decided to take in a relaxing showing of the hot remake of John Howard Carpenter’s now seminal classic, _Big Trouble in Little China_. Amid the end of the film, he spotted a familiar pterosaur crest in a nest of much _shorter_ cut lime green spiked hair. His rival of many sorts leaned over the biotechnological casket that contained his sister as she coughed wetly into the air once more before responding.

“It’s a giant pain that there’s now way to assume the reality. There is no cure for Type 12 Diabetes, except for that haunted terror house in Sunnybrook. I know that you can’t enter due to being far too famous & instantly recognizable to the fiends within, who hate all form of expressive youth. The Ghastly Boomer Army & their leader, Phantom Wilford Brimley, are the only ones who know the mystic chants that will rid my body of this foul disability. Who knows what I could accomplish were I whole again…?” she mused aloud as Andredactyl seemed to silently weep over her broken form.

Beaglesaurus decided to do some investigating himself & decided that not only could he manage to show up Andredactyl, he could both instill compassion, mercy & general goodness into Aridactyl’s reptilian heart. It was semi common knowledge to stay away from the oldest house in Sunnybrook, because it was _obviously really haunted_. Those who stepped there once did not step their twice. This wasn’t due to anything happening to them, though. It was more that those who did step twice were immediately destroyed with rays of blinding necrotic energy that was very good at showing off human skeletons by devoiding them of the fascia and flesh that to it are joined life. The Ghastly Boomer Army was indeed a force to be reckoned with. Like the Wild Hunts of old, they would rush towards voting booths, bingo halls, lodge clubs, stone chessboards in the park & bowling alleys, unleashing their phantasmal wrath on those who interrupted their bouts of geriatric self-entertainment. But at this point, they were at peace, holed up in the fortified former mansion known widely as the Terror House, but more astutely (or to prospective Realtors of little brain or high ambition) as the Stately Brimley Manor. It took our hero all of the afternoon to come up with an idea of how best to challenge the intolerant elderly that denied both the youthful and the living their freedoms in lieu of “simpler” times where problems were _even more easily ignored_. Thus, he headed to Mei’s Workshop & checked in with Tarkus Tercel, nationalized American citizen since the month before & still partner in automobile mechanics (& other tinkering to be done) to Mei. Outside her workshop, Robosaurus 1.0 was eating a bowl of copper wiring in an imitation of the human invention of spaghetti, rubbing it against his lips & sliding it into his mouth. Robosaurus 1.0 began to chew the copper wiring, then set it back down & looked towards Beaglesaurus.

“Ah, welcome, Beagle. I am still upset with you for what seemed highly like a replacement of my services with inferior products. I know that it is hard for you to find anything created as well as me, but I am still upset all the same. Mei could have at least helped you. She is very adept at robotics. Soon, I will have the necessary implements of facial construction to begin having visible emotion. She has yet to find a way to make my voice sound any less monotonous, but she is a robotic engineer & machinist, not a sound engineer. Tarkus, it seems, is also not a sound engineer. This was a joke. Have you seen Tarkus lately? He seems to be confusingly absent from the workshop in the past week. When he returned home, he was covered in lipstick kisses on his blue working collar. He has also began wearing clothing other than his coveralls & utilizing time not spent in respite in his Recharging Chamber upstairs with activity of secretive & social consequence. I believe he may be in a semblance of one of your human relationships or in a human courting ritual,” Robosaurus 1.0 reported. While also assuming a more male-patterned personality & cadence, it was clear that he was still getting used to the barrier of expressiveness vs. subtlety & not speaking _all_ of his feelings. Beaglesaurus was happy to know he was learning more about himself & the world around him & smiled, pleasantly.

“Oh, don’t worry too much about him, I’m sure he’s just getting up to some wacky new hobby like ship breaking or firewalking or even the fine sport of yo-yo,” Beaglesaurus offered as he patted his enormous chum on his metallic Tyrannosaurus thigh, “Anyway, I’ve got some trouble to solve. That cad who tore up your… _sibling…_ ” he tried, seeing if Robosaurus 1.0 would be anywhere near receptive to emotive coercions to try to create a semblance of familial familiarity to go about volunteering his aid.

“You are referring to Robosaurus 2.0, an unrelated entity that was clearly inferior to me. I do not care for their health or their functionality status. I am still trying to process the emotions involved with you creating a very faulty, nigh insulting, duplicate attempt of me. Please, in further discussions involving this thing that you made that resembles me in a cruel mockery of my form, regard that I do not hold any connection to them. Please wait.” Robosaurus 1.0 picked up a small metal mask off of a red velvet-lined chest & pressed it over his robotic humanoid visage. It looked almost identical to his normal face, but it had large angular “angry” eyebrows, “Until self-controlled animatronics can be installed in my steely surfaces, she has provided me with utilizable emotional masks. I find them very helpful in expressing that I am angry at you.”

“So he’s a _younger_ sibling then!”

“Please move inside & speak to my wife instead of speaking with me now. This conversation has reached a finite point of my emotional efficiency to stomach your nonsense.”

“I will make sure to not bring it up!” Beaglesaurus said as he clapped his hand on his best friend’s steel tail, then began to saunter his way internally.

Inside, Tarkus was using lasers to keep the forge lit expertly as Mei was doing some spot-welding, making a piece of art that looked like a metallic mannequin.

“Ah, it’s _you_. What do you want this time, Beaglesaurus?” she asked as she lifted her welding mask & flipped her hair back, sliding a threaded rod to hold her hair back so it wouldn’t slip into the danger zone again. She had learned well from the last four times she’d had an impromptu hairstyle conundrum.

“I need your help. I can pay well because I just got my government gold in for the month,” he said as Beaglesaurus slipped an ingot from his pocket & did a short back-kick like one would with a hackeysack to land it in his hand, holding it out to her.

“...It depends on what you want. It better not be something ridiculous.” He looked at her with a blank expression that said plenty, “Alright, it better not be something that will piss me off!”

“It shouldn’t do anything like that, I hope. Unless you’re offended by… _dance_!” he said as he swiveled his hips. Her glare of disinterest made him stop swiveling very quickly. “Look, here is my idea.”

He handed her an index card that merely read: “Flossing → Weaponry?” She looked up & started rubbing her head with her hands & slipped the welding mask off entirely as she snapped her fingers at Tarkus.

“Take an Energon break & come back in 30,” she ordered & Tarkus nodded. He opened a Minibot into a small cell phone & called someone.

“Yeah… Just meet me outside,” he said quietly & nodded, reaching into a large cabinet near the ceiling & drew out a fat pink cube & started sucking one corner of it. Hitting a button on the wall, the garage door of the workshop opened & Tarkus walked out, letting the door shut behind him.

“He’s _apparently_ _**seeing**_ someone…” Mei mused as she slipped off her gloves & flicked the index card into the forge where it went up in an almost instantaneous little flit of flame, “But that’s not important. What do you need a _flossing weapon for_?”

“Look… I know Robosaurus 2.0 might have been a mistake…”

“Might?”

“Okay, they weren’t well thought out! I was under a lot of stress & I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly. I regret it too…”

“That’s better than not realizing you’re a dope…”

“Those Gonzales Siblings are out on some kind of revenge scheme against me. Aridactyl stole something very important to me and… she got sick because of it. I know that’s her fault in the end, but… I still feel bad. And I’m hoping if I can fix it, maybe we can break even & these snotty douchebags will call a truce of some sort. In order to do that, I need to infiltrate… the Sunnybrook Terror House,” he said, inwardly cringing in anticipation of Mei’s choler.

“Hmm, you want to break into a mansion filled with ghosts of pissy old people to steal _something_ to cure the lady who kidnapped your family & destroyed your trademark trench coat?”

“Or at least getting her back to normal enough that she can be adequately defeated or trashed on.”

“And you’re really _this_ invested in it?”

“That or I’ll die trying like a huge hero!”

“Welllllll, we wouldn’t want that to happen… So for now, how about I take _this_ ,” she said as she gingerly picked up the gold ingot & smirked, “And ya know… I never _did_ get a chance to get my hands on that metal pith & marrow of yours back when I was interested in you…” she said with a sly smirk of generally teasing & insincere flirtation. “Luckily, I think this will cover fixing my husband so he can have a better face!”  
“Is that mannequin what I… _think_ it is?” Beaglesaurus implored, devilishly. Mei blushed & shook the ingot at him in a mildly threatening manner.

“That… is not any of your business! So, come back tomorrow & we can start some biomechanic work. I’ll try to make it not _too_ invasive…” She stuck her tongue out at him & got back to working on the figure next to her.

Beaglesaurus nodded & walked out & gave a wink to Robosaurus 1.0. Robosaurus 1.0, lacking eyelids, did nothing of the same in return & instead moved his body up & down in a way that made his face look as if he were nodding. On the way back home, a lanky drifter approached him with a butterfly set & a crinkled handful of dollar bills.

“Hey, could I buy like… maybe just like a _half_ a vial of blood, man?”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that just now… Do you have an alcohol wipes even?”  
“Awww, dang, I knew I forgot something… Man, tonight is a bust way crazy. Sorry, I’ll come back tomorrow…” the shifty drifter shrugged as he shuffled off into the darkness of a vacant lot nearby & seemingly fell over.

Beaglesaurus, bemused, but uninterested, went back home, had a bowl of fried rice for dinner, an apple turnover for dessert & got some rest. Alighting from his slumber at dawn, Beaglesaurus strode his way towards his rooftop via the classical family ladder & began whipping his tail in a circle to begin gliding out from Agincourt to Don Valley North to get to Mei’s Workshop, wondering if next month he can get a replacement trench coat to replace the one that Aridactyl most heartlessly eradicated into far farther than last Tuesday. Landing on their roof, he saw a black limousine leaving the Workshop & Tarkus waving to it. He was mildly suspicious of this & landed in a sick superhero landing next to him, creating a small crater that made Tarkus topple over when he tried stepping backwards without looking.

“Shit!” Tarkus announced as he stumbled onto his back & began struggling to his feet, “What _the fuck_?”

“Wanna tell me what _that_ was all about?”

“I’m… seeing someone.”  
“I’ve heard. Who is it?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“What if it’s someone trying to kill me?”  
“You’re nuts.”  
“Maybe.”

“Yeah, maybe you _are_.”  
“Then why are you getting defensive?”

“ _I’m not getting defensive_!” Tarkus snapped, then powered back down, sitting with his knees against his chest, “Alright… I’ve been seeing…” he sighed heavily & opened his Zun, showing off a picture of himself & film star, Honorary FDNNY Battalion Fire Chief, former Mayor of Valley Stream, NNY, Saturn Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actor (his uneasy character of Garland “The Marietta Mangler” Greene astounded audiences, but would lose out to Vincent D’Onofrio’s terrifying, yet eerily realistic portrayal of a insectoid alien in a human skin in _Men in Black_ ) & all-around American hero Steven Vincent Buscemi.

“Look, Steve is still kinda wanting to keep this quiet. And, I _know_ he’s just a _great_ kisser, but ya know, keep this quiet, would you? We’re still going at things… casually, I just don’t wanna scare him off…” Tarkus offered, giving his most desperate look with his entirely robotic face.

“My techno-organic lips are sealed, Tarkus Tercel, my old chum. No one will learn your secret. I just never thought you were interested in…”

“Men?”

“More like humans…”

“I don’t know, I just met him one day at Billford’s Sarnies when he came to get change for gas. Something about him just… makes my internal matrix race faster…”

“Hey, I’m glad you found someone you love, man.”  
“Thanks, Beaglesaurus, you always just know what to say to help a man come better to terms with a secretive celebrity relationship.”

“Aww, you’re not the first person to say it!” Beaglesaurus said, packed to the gills with humility beyond his years as Tarkus began drinking down another cube’s worth of energon, “So when’s the wedding?”

“Ack!” Tarkus spit energon all over his chest & legs that soon absorbed into his own silicon-based lifestyle as he stopped choking, recalling that he is a transforming robot & didn’t require air to breathe (or to breathe at all, really!) “Geez, I don’t even let me _drive_ me yet, dude! Are you being mondo sketch, dog, or are you really gonna keep the skinny on this?”

“Don’t you worry, Tarkus. Your secrets are safe with me. I’ll probably forget tomorrow.”

“Thanks, bro. That’s pretty chillax of you.”

Heading inside, Beaglesaurus laid up on Mei’s table as she snapped a swimcap over her head to further keep her hair out of her face & let a pair of goggles snap onto her face. After she was _mostly_ sure Beaglesaurus was unconscious, she began to implanting the Flossing Engine, the greatest piece of technology made by human hands since Robosaurus 1.0 (& before that, the Zapping System.) It was a four hour process to wire it into his nerve endings without making it both hurt like having all your nerves ripped out & replaced with mechanical pieces, but _also_ to make sure it could be removed when Beagle was adequately done with his current amount of intense heroism that he’d go about getting his cybertronics removed again. She certainly had the ability, but she knew _all too well_ that Beaglesaurus was already _far too extr_ _a_ to remove all of Robosaurus 2.0’s bodily components from his own until he had reached some deep internal amount of penance. She knew that he would probably need to defeat some large-scale menace to society or at least a lower scale consistent annoyance to him personally. Though she was still mildly miffed about the Robosaurus 2.0 incident, she was beginning to forgive him & just mostly hoped that this Andredactyl business would end up being just what he needed to encourage him to come back to his full level of humanity & maybe get towards dragging himself out of the superhero lifestyle that she knew sometimes worried her former rival & current third best friend, Aria. When she was done & replaced the large metallic panels that formed Beaglesaurus’ chest & used some quick spot-welding to make sure it wouldn’t just pop off from his chest. Not only did the Flossing Engine easily replace his otherwise generally featureless beige rocket-firing chest panels, but now it did well to release a powerful laser weapon, like a beauteous artillery weapon firing across distant galaxies in a naive, yet robust intergalactic war.

She helped him up to his feet & used a mechanical tongue rubbed against the back of his neck to make him wake up & begin rolling on the ground in mild discomfort. She helped him up & quickly hid the mechanical tongue back in her safe & closed it before Beaglesaurus could detect what she had also been building in secret for her husband’s imminent new physicality.

“Alright, Beagle, ol’ pal! This is the Flossing Engine!” she said, patting the large irising aperture now a part of his chest.

“So, I just floss & it will unleash heroic righteousness into my opponents and other enemies of justice?”

“More or less. But let’s go outside to practice this…”

She had Robosaurus 1.0 drag his entire techno-organic body outside into the vacant lot & then set him down again.

“So, start flossing & I’ll explain while it goes,” she encouraged, helpfully, as Beaglesaurus began his flossing extravaganza, “It’ll also work with Orange Justice, the Dougie, the Mufasa & Turbo Moonwalking.”

“What about Twerking?”  
“ _Do not dare attempt to twerk_. You do not have an ass enough to properly twerk. It could create an influx of energy that wouldn’t jive with your human body parts.”  
“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Let me see… it would like… instead of putting _gasoline_ in your car… you instead put _kerosene_ in your car! And then you stuffed nails into the gas tank. And then you stuffed ham into the gas tank. And then you stuffed approximately 57% of your human body into it. And also you’re the car.”

“Alright… so don’t twerk then…?”  
“ _Never_! You may begin flossing now!”  
  


Beaglesaurus began the anti-thrusting movement of left & right with his hips, accompanied by the rhythmic, yet stiff shifting of his forearms & fists into a powerful charging animation that made the large Kirbyesque machine on his chest begin accumulating energy in long spikes of pink & grey flitting energy. He began letting out a loud, Saiyajin reminiscent shout to the heavens as he threw his head back. Not realizing how this may change his stance, the Flossing Laser fired out at top speeds, tearing off through the air & into space. He was mildly worried that this would upset people from space, but today he was prepared for anything! Before he could continue, Mei tackled him tactically from the side, holding his left & right techno-organic arms to cut off his Flossing Energy intake, making the beam stop. Ripley’s Aquarium of America, making the entire new edifice (replacing the Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada due to worries that octopuses would break free & seize control of the AN Tower & resituating it where the original was to be built after the Great Wolf Lodge fell into Niagara Falls due to an overcrowded Coldplay concert.) It would a tragedy as Beaglesaurus & Mei flew their way over to inspect the damage. Seeing fish & other marine animals pouring into the falls, Mei asked to be let down & immediately started legging it back to her Workshop as Beaglesaurus stealthily appropriated a deceased marlin to aid him in his battle against these villainous… twins? He still was not sure how old either of them were, but he knew well that they would be up to something surely. Beaglesaurus announced his anger in a cry of righteous indignation before he called up most of his friends. With Aria still attending to diplomatic matters on the crimson red planet, Baka & Leti were the only ones to show up quickly enough for this mad dash charge on the Sunnybrook Terror House. On the other hand, he had expertly acquired enough people left on Fiver to start his forward salvo: a flash mob was slowly assembling by the household, starting to slip their hands into their pockets. Among the fourteen people assorted that Mei had joined, they each flung out their right arms, holding something all elderly folks were aghast & confused about: chemically-activated glow sticks. Not only were they a trademark of party culture that was beyond those who could go about adequately enjoying themselves on the town, they made a light dim enough that they were annoying to watch from the periphery of one’s vision, like fireflies flitting in and out of your field of view.

The attack began as the ghosts began to crowd near the chained & locked gates. Ancient curses & their own general laziness prevented them from tarrying far outside of their doors or their magic from reaching too far beyond such homemaker’s barriers. Had they not, the whole of Neo-Oakland would more than likely have been destroyed already, if not the whole of the State of Neo-Ontario! Though their moans carried an inherent & disturbing spookiness quotient, the quantum of their ghastliness could not challenge fifteen people assembled in a flash mob. Their youthful exuberance made it just that much more challenging to the ghosts of roughly sixty to eighty years in the past as they began shrieking into the night. The flash mob’s eyes closed as they began to chant general information about bitcoin, blockchain, the intricate process of the stylish Coffin Dance (now mocking their old styles & the fact that they were no longer among the ranks of living Boomers) & their adamant love of the carbonated sodas, the hamburger sandwiches & the illustrious allure of the “Music Television.” As Beaglesaurus began running down the street towards the house at full sprint, he demanded his way through the path with flailing arm & also because he was carrying a large pointy dead fish in his other. Using both of his highly techno-organic arms, he drove the marlin through the chains. The chains, equally aghast by the sudden assault, opened tiny mouths along the haunted constraints & shattered into pieces of ghostly energy. It seems that an attack with a corpse was _precisely_ the tactic needed to break himself in as the gates swung out, a blast of necrotic miasma attempting to engulf him. As he leapt forward, he began flossing faster & faster still until a beam of pure Flossing Light Energy blasted through the Sunnybrook Terror House, dropping all sorts of madness from floor to floor along it. It is unknown what destroyed 97% of the ghosts of ornery Boomers that still, balmy November evening, but it was genuinely thought to be either a very powerful laser made of pure Flossing or it was the awe-inspiring attempts at youthful activity that even the Ghastly Boomers could not hope to challenge. The world and even life had passed them by & now, devoid of their ability to define themselves as superior to the youth in the face of their display, they were chased from the Earth by both their youthful, honest gleams of expression & also an incredibly powerful laser that collided into the entire house, through it & beyond into the depths of space, sure to upset yet another galactic entity or peacekeeping force.

As the flash mob ended & his forces charged the effluvial manor, Beaglesaurus dashed inward to see Phantom Wilford Brimley in a tall, overly soft reclining chair. Despite it being a recliner, it paradoxically also rocked gently forward & back & also vibrated. This could be considered perhaps the most relaxing of chairs in the world, but it was perhaps a mere gift of the afterlife.

“I have come here not to true full force of battle, Phantom Wilford Brimley! I wish for you to remove the curse that is Type 12 Diabetes from Aridactyl Gonzales. Do this & I shall leave you & the resk of you ilk be. No more destruction or soul-death must necessarily continue. This is your move. You can do what you like, but know this! Challenge me… and you will not survive!” Beaglesaurus announced dramatically.

“I’ll do nuthin’ of the sort! Nuthin’ you can produce will deny meh muh ability to do as uh please! Such a curse, if found here, is all but warranted. Any relic uh buried in muh yerd is not fit for humman usage. If such a thin’ was ever goin’ to be freed, death & anguish would awash over the great city of Toronto—”

“You mean Neo-Oakland?” Beaglesaurus offered. Phantom Wilford Brimley merely grumbled in all of a humbug writhing through his meaty undead heart.

“Tell muh not the land on which uh live! Uh will call it as it is! There is nothing _Neo_ about your Ontario & nothing _Neo_ about your lie of uh city! But enough talk! Have at thee!” Phantom Wilfred Brimley announced, before standing up in the slow rate of several minutes, then fiddled behind his large comfortable chair & started dragging a sword thicker than his head & almost half his size. “Now the true battle begins! The old vussus the young! We own the streets, sucker! Now, get off muh lawn!” he cried, hauling the mammoth sword over his head with both hands, driving it down in a vicious cleaving of naught & might.

Dodging back against the hallway, Beaglesaurus darted forwards & drew his first secret weapon from his left pocket of his Italian leather pants. He fired a tiny laser pointer beam directly into Wilford Brimley’s tender corneas & he recoiled in confusion & pain at the sudden laser attack. Beaglesaurus began using his tail as a mustache & leapt towards him, punching him in the head. The tottered creature slipped over & landed on his knee as he yanked his sword up again for a wide, blind, lateral slash. As Beaglesaurus dove forward towards him, he leapt forwards over the swinging blade of might & used one arm against his forehead to hold him down as he landed in a vicegrip of cyborg intimidation. Out of his right pocket, he picked up his second & final secret weapon for this attack, running a thin, slightly wet bar of soap onto the elderly spectre’s glasses, covering them in the trademark opaqueness of graduation announcements & pleas to be cleaned that adorned so many rear windows in this crazy day & age.

As he viciously soaped a ghast’s glasses, Baka & Leti made a beeline for stairs, Baka running to the door on the side of the staircase, leading her to the basement. Leti would nod sharply & begin setting explosives & a highly flammable bucket of lard. Minutes later, there were high yield hunks of plastic demolitions equipment strewn about & a particularly shitty looking closet full of hard candies & bags of garlic. Leti ate fourteen cloves, but only so she could brag about it later, taking video of her doing it while lighting the house on fire. Baka emerged carrying four large treasure chests under her two entirely human arms.

“Leg it, we’re already rich now!” she said as she picked up a salt shaker full of salted diamonds & began grinding diamond dust into her coat pocket & kicking at a couple of ingots she dropped on the floor.

Leti shut off the video to continue chewing her mouthful of garlic & picked up the ingots & one of the treasure chests, throwing it & then riding astride it as it tumbled down the front pathway, skidding along the gravel. As the sisters dashed out, Beaglesaurus finished his soapy survey of all he saw fit & stepped back, pulling his glasses off entirely. Feeling his anchor to this very realm shaking in the hands of his inevitable destroyer, Phantom Wilford Brimley could already feel himself beginning to fade off in power. With one last tactic to defeat him in his repertoire, he dashed upstairs to access his most powerful weapon. Atop Stately Brimley Manor stood his powerful Oatmeal Cannon, a weapon capable of harnessing both the intolerably heated & overly sticky semisolid that was a morning’s porridge. The very concept of it screamed into Brimley as he hurried higher & emerged on the rooftop, throwing open the hatch. Unlocking it from its embedded tricalibur chassis, Phantom Wilford Brimley threw down the key to the locking mechanism now that it was fully activated. Before he could lift it from its veining aperture & transistor bearings, a vicious jolt of motion assaulted his chest. As the very pressured impact struck against him before the physical heaviness of it, Brimley was sent sprawling to the edge of the railing on his tactical rooftop attack point. Before he could do more, his arms began windmilling in violent typhoons of grace so infinitely lacking. A deep gash opened where he had just been struck as blood began seeping into his chest & other places it probably shouldn’t be, like outside. Before he could sternly say more to protest their attack, a secondary attack did the same, slicing his chest now in a deep X shaped furrow as the Lord of the Sunnybrook Terror House, Phantom Wilford Brimley, collided with his patio roof, crashing easily through to the concrete patio below.

Beaglesaurus stood forward & leaned over him, only for Phantom Wilford Brimley to smack him in the right leg hard enough to knock him back. It was seconds later that his nigh indestructible Oatmeal Cannon collided into him like two cars colliding in a traffic accident, except these were no cars & this was _no accident_! Andredactyl landed atop it as he dug his heels into the artillery installation. He stood up from his crouched landing & smirked as he did so. As he walked in front of the machine, he gripped the barrel & lifted it up. Behind him, another figure landed & lifted the cannon farther from the other end, leading it to Andredactyl’s champagne 202X Chevy Silverado high capacity pickup truck. As Phantom Wilford Brimley began bleeding from his entirely shattered inhuman legs, he groaned in pain & suffering, wiggling his arms carefully so as not to open any fresh wounds.

“I… I-I don’t understand! I thought you were a phantom! Some kind of ghost! Where did all this arcane power & an army of elderly ghosts come from if not from you?!” Beaglesaurus implored to know from the fading Brimley.

“Well, that’s certainluh uh storah to tell. Ever since I was young, my father, Wilford Brimley, named me Phantom Wilford Brimley after his favorite story. In his youth, he imagined a wonderful world where,” He took a quick moment to scream in horrible pain, then stopped, calming down as Andredactyl & the other figure began tying down the Cannon, “Wh-where a foppish Revolutionary soldier was accidentally locked in his clock with his beloved cat. After he slowly starved to death, he swore that criminality & hatred would be fought with aid from the coolest kids of the day. In his late days, his driver, Charles Barton, stole his great unwritten tale & turned into the subpar Abbot & Costello comedy, _The Time of Their Lives_ , & my father drew his own life from himself in all of a sharp single sorrow. Ever since time immemorial, I tried to rally against that bastard Barton, but he avoided me at every turn until he died a rich man & me, only a moderately rich man due to my illustrious film career! Before I could finish my own treatment to appeal to the modern youth of 1971. The day that I went to take my finished script to the bigwigs of American Hollywood Society though, my surly butler, Joseph Barbera & my chef, William Hanna, snatched up my script & sold it for a song to ABC! My dream was dashed forever as _The Funky Phantom_ was broadcast for a mere 17 episodes & died as a cheap knock-off of more successful mystery cartoons about teenagers & a comical sidekick. What was supposed to be a wonderful story of the pain of man became a Bert Lahr or Snagglepuss annoyance with no one who could reclaim such a thing. Bitter & tormented by the thefts of my father’s great story, I became withdrawn & obsessed with the dark arts, creating my advanced Oatmeal Cannon & my vast Ghastly Boomer Army. Now, they are all but gone. When I am dead myself, they will all disappear, no longer trapped in my broken home. Chasing or destroying trespassers was both my way of lashing out at a world that had harmed me in my youth & my middle age so often & even when I buried away most of my unholy relics, I had to make sure no one would take up my things to spread such evils throughout the world. I had to protect the monster created that was this house. Now… my greatest invention has been stolen. When the oatmeal fired from it hardens, it is believed to be the hardest substance known to man! This adamant oatmeal is almost completely unstoppable…!”  
“So you were merely a man obsessed with revenge this whole time… I… never knew…”

“Oh, I’m certainly a man, but I’m not human or anything. I was born a ghoul like my father before me & every now & again I had to go to the old graveyard & dig up something to eat. But, other than that, it was a normal life of a famed Hollywood character actor. Now, I shall move on to another world. Becoming a Ghoul Ghost, the Afterlife Judiciary will find me somewhere better to haunt… if not here within the lunar fortnight.”  
“You said _almost_ completely unstoppable! What is it that can stop the Oatmeal Cannon?”  
“The secret is so incredibly simple, all you need to do is uuuuuuuuuurrrrrrgh—” Brimley declared, dying, & then died with a long, gross-sounding guttural groan of a last breath.

Pressing the loud, irritating _La Cucaracha_ horn over & over, Andredactyl stopped so he could lean out the passenger side window. Leaning out of the driver’s side window & slumping her body over the roof to smile widely at our hero, Beaglesaurus spotted the completely healthy & supremely shitty face of Aridactyl as she smirked smirkingly at him. The two burst out laughing as Leti silently picked up a small handful of diamond dust from her older sister’s pocket & began inching closer, Baka’s car parked behind theirs.

“Ha! You’re so _incredibly stupid_! You took all of that time & effort to break into the Sunnybrook Terror House & destroy all of the Ghastly Boomer Army just for us to _completely embarrass you_! This was all a _joke_ , you arrogant fool! My obviously superior sister never had Type 12 Diabetes! It’s not even _real_! You didn’t even check to see, did you? How _foolish_ of you!” Andredactyl announced as he picked up a medium-sized five pound bag of sugar, “Tell him, sister mine!”

“Yeah, you dumbass! Someone as trendy as _me_ doesn’t get sick or deal with _problems_! And when I do, my _superior_ brother gets it taken care of! I got a _Dynamo Pancreas_ installed four years ago when I was adopted into the Gonzales family, you couldn’t even manage to kill me if you shoved four pints of sugar directly into my _bloodstream_ , you metal-faced beggar! Andre, show him the goods!”

As Beaglesaurus rushed at them, his mind being overtaken by a rage of consistent indignation with their abusive antics & thinking of how many people & ghosts (& a singular ghoul) had died in their sick games of cat & mouse, he dashed at top speeds to deliver a smart smashing punch to Andredactyl’s smirking auric smile. Before he could though, Andredactyl gripped his black painted talons of fingernails into the bag & smashed Beaglesaurus in the face with it just as he arrived at him. Searing pain charged through most of Beaglesaurus’ face as powdered sugar was dipped almost full force into his eyes, nose, mouth & other uncomfortable facial cavities, overloading his ability to see as he began angrily spitting the sugary nonsense into Andredactyl’s face.

“GAH! Is assaulting me with polysaccharides all you have to offer, you walking lackluster hero complex?” he asked with disdain as he wiped the sugary drool out of his face.

Before either could continue, a man in a dark suit approached, sauntering in with a sideways baseball cap on his head & a boombox on his shoulder. He set down the boombox & pointed directly at Andredactyl.

“Oh shit! It’s dat boy! What’s good, man? You’re Andredactyl, aren’t you? The one that lives in the golden mansion out on Bridle Path?!” he asked, exaggeratedly while pointing with both fingerguns & smirking hilariously at him.

“Ah, a fan, I see!” he said with an obnoxious grin & began signing the man’s face with a marker,

“Oh good! I _thought_ it was you!” his demeanor immediately changed as his face became uninterested & sallow of energy. He took out a sheaf of papers & shoved it into Andredactyl’s hands, “You are being served. We will see you in court,” he said bluntly & walked off. Andredactyl flipped through the papers frantically with a mild scowl on & groaned.

“What the hell is this?! I’m being sued by an unknown party for being ‘too sexy?’ How do you get punitive damages from _good looks_?! Who is this ‘Baka Matsu’ that thinks that I’m too sexy to let her do her job?! Does she even _have one_?” he asked as Aridactyl started kicking him in the left arm.

“Quit complaining & let’s get _out of he_ —”

Before Aridactyl could go about flooring it, Baka drove her 1997 black Chevy Impala into them, rear-ending them harshly before she let out an incredibly loud whoop of victory!

“You’re gonna settle or pay out for tons, you sexy bastard! How dare you walk around with a face like that, you menace?!” she decried of his apparently good looks.

Before Andredactyl could go about looking back to see who could unleash such affronts upon him in such rebukes, Leti threw her fistful of diamond dust into his eyes as he began making loud, infuriated groans of anguish as the well-grinding madness of tiny shards of ground diamond ravaged his blinking eyelids & tore his corneas to shreds not too far from rubbing an incredibly tiny cheese grater against his bare, open eyeballs. Shrieking, he held his tearing eyes shut & shouted, pointing nowhere near Beaglesaurus or Baka.

“This isn’t over! I’ll come back even stronger than before! You think that this has sated my need for vengananas? You have no idea! _This time_ , it’s personal! You attack my _money_ & my _face_?! You think that you can just decide that _I’m_ not going to be able to survive _this_? I’m going to come back far stronger than all of this! And you’ll _rue_ the day you crossed the Gonzales Family!”

As Aridactyl floored it before she could get any similar treatment & they both sneered together to begin racing away to their home several minutes away. Beaglesaurus had been had again as Mei & Baka helped him into the back of Baka’s Impala as she sat on the popped trunk, using her brown leather boots to try to keep the treasure chests packed inside. She cackled with glee as she admired the many rings & other jewelry & she & her sister shared gremlin grins to each other, lavishing in their riches. Beaglesaurus, defeated once more, was dropped off at his house. But now he had just one more piece of the puzzle. They lived in a golden mansion on Bridle Path. There was only one house like that. So now… he could take the war to the Gonzales’ House...


	9. Chapter 9

**Part III of However Many:**

**It’s Like a Prank War… But Without the Pranks**

**Chapter I — _Dr. Funktime’s Devious Diagnosis of Deadly Dilemmas_** or **_The Prank War’s First Salvo: Breakfast is Now Dead!_**

“I’m afraid that you will have to wear _really cool_ prescription sunglasses that will keep your eyes from being overaffected by strong light. If you are going outside, you should wear these _anytime_ the Sun is out or at night so can see someone move in stormy nights,” the Doctors tell Andredactyl as they turn their backs on him. They already know well his threats won’t change their ability, “Nothing more can be done to fix them. They may also sparkle in direct sunlight if you dramatically reveal them, but we must stress that it would be _incredibly painful_ for you.”  
“Heh… And what if I’m rich enough that pain doesn’t hurt?”

“It would also still be very damaging to your eyes & make the problems significantly worse over time. You should know better than to look directly at the Sun in the first place.”

“So you’re saying you _refuse_ to help further?”

“We’ve done all that can be done. You know as much. We are already the best there is. To throw us out, you would only be getting a lesser opinion. Even if someone lies to you, they won’t be able to fix it. This is something no one can entirely assuage you of. This is all.” They began to filter out in terrible silence.

A scowling Andredactyl angrily stormed out to his Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, not noticing the slightly browned color of the illustrious & eponymous chicken of eternity splayed on the hood. As he rushed back to his house, he angrily drove in a reckless manner down the street, throwing bottles out of the window to try to knock people’s mailboxes mildly ajar. He drove seemingly his car into his large rotating garage as the car began beeping quietly. Andredactyl stormed his way back to his largest zen room & began dumping a box full of Weed 3 into his maw, a generally understood fine way to have a decent nap & a couple of interesting dreams (or at minimum, enhancing the generalized flavor of a jar of an adequate Mexican Salsa.) Andredactyl sat back in a large vibrating chair, enjoying a fine slow jostle of his spinal muscles. Slipping on a pair of expensive platinum Beats by Dre, he sighed out & listened to some shitty trap remixes. The beeping he was wholeheartedly ignoring in the name of grinding his teeth & listening to loud, blaring techno music & groaning through said teeth was more important than he’d thought. This was mostly because he hadn’t noticed that a certain Archduke of the Skate Park had secretly taken his Pontiac Firebird Trans Am & had his erstwhile chum Mei do a quick paint job on a particularly compacted set of plastic explosives shaped into a roughly car-shaped form & with a brownish Chicken Set on the hood. Standing back at the Mei Workshop, Beaglesaurus & Mei pushed down the oversized dynamite plungers that they had used as detonators.

Half of Andredactyl’s golden mansion was destroyed in the ensuing blast, but it was soon clear that Andredactyl himself was just that little bit farther away across the miles of estate he owned. As he lay back in his chair, a broken pipe above him began dumping the champagne line busted open as it began cascading down to start drenching all of Andredactyl’s shorter emerald green spiky hair. When it became clear that his Beats by Dre were completely ruined due to them being submerged with the rest of his head, Andredactyl leaned his entire human torso forward to throw his head out of the champagne flooding into his zen room. Breaking forward, he rushed to the bathroom & looked into the mirror. Without actually registering how he actually looked, he smashes his fist into the mirror. His hand started to slowly bleed along the shattered sheet of silvered glass from 14th Century France & pulled free a blood-soaked shard. Aiming it at his head, he cried in an inequity that only the spoiled rich getting their inevitable self-earned comeuppance.

It would be a three hour drive out to Rochester in Neo New York, a visitation tag for the Strong & speaking the secret passcode (“Why this is the most delicate steel ever baked into a pie!”) until he was invited in to see the eclectic mad scientist premiere in the tri-state area, Dr. Jeremiah Aloysius Fortesque Funktime. Crossing his white gloved fingers, he eyed the affluent Andredactyl & unleashed an entirely shark’s smile as he lifted his round glasses off of his face.

“How _incredibly disgusting_! Your hair is _alarmingly feminine_ & you look like a _complete tool_!” he exclaimed, far more than an appropriate level of loudness.

“I’m. Aware,” Andredactyl managed out slowly through his grinding, clenched teeth.

“This is going to take me all of several minutes to fix! Wow, your eyes are sparkling with the regrets of your present too, huh?”

“I don’t care about my eyes right now. My perfect hair is more important. My eyes I can survive without showing…”  
“Did you bring what I asked for, then?” Andredactyl nodded & motioned & his butler, Dr. Mt. Shasta, set down a briefcase with thick padded lining inside. Opening it, there was revealed a freshly printed American five-dollar bill & a pack of Capri Sun Coastal Cooler with the straw on the side, to no doubt be used as Dr. Funktime saw fit.

“Good,” he declared, “On the table, I’ll knock you out & we can begin… the procedures. I guarantee nothing & you know just as well as I do that if this goes wrong, I _certainly_ can’t be held _too_ responsible…”

“That’s a risk I’m going to have to be willing to take for now… But know this… If I don’t make it out alive… Dr. Mt. Shasta has been ordered to use scissors to flay your skin off & clip your nerve endings off by the _centimeter_. So don’t get any bright ideas about what to do with my _expensive_ hair! It’s already damaged enough from being cut recently… and this latest unfortunate… _accident…_ ”

“An _accident_ , sir?” asked Dr. Mt. Shasta, who was not particularly _informed_ on the nature of Andredactyl’s horrible new transformation.

“ _It was an accident how it happened_! But it is certainly someone’s _fault_ all the same… This is a declaration of war from that dullard Beaglesaurus! And if he wants a war on his hands… then I’ll be the one to give it to him!”

Standing next to the operating table, bright lightning flashed across the domed roof of Dr. Funktime’s Secret Laboratory, highlighting that Andredactyl’s hair had been turned a horribly darkish fuschia, nearing puce levels of internal redness & auburnacity. Laying down, Dr. Funktime began the operation to reverse the procedure. Although it was clear that it would naturally take roughly 45 minutes to an hour to create a decent hair dye process, Dr. Funktime was a man beyond his times & had, of course, divined the true nature of the process, thus, mastering it. After a mere seven minutes, Dr. Funktime stood behind a pace of 7 inch glass & pushed a button to activate the intercom.

“You may stand up now, but do so _very_ slowly, it will build suspense & intrigue as to the results of your operation. You’ll also probably _totally_ eat shit if you try it too fast. You’ll fall flat on our face!” he began laughing, then cleared his throat & stopped, “But yes, not too quickly. There is a mirror on the wall to your right.”

Andredactyl sneered at jokes being made at _his_ expense. He was a superior person with superior breeding & ultimate ability. Jokes were made for & on people _less_ important than him. This made it far more irritating & unbelievable to a chap of his wealth that he would be so horribly misdealt by fate & by a shifty madman he specifically hired to do a quicker than normal dye job due to low cost & quick results. As he looked up, he found in the mirror that his hair had gone from a mere magenta he had been contending with to a brighter pale _Mimi pink_! On a small tray below the mirror, there was a tape recorder & player. Andredactyl was even more furious though, finding he now had relatively _bushy_ eyebrows it would take more than a few hours work at an aesthetician’s to end up fixing up for him especial. He raised one hand & saw it was still mildly bloody from punching his mirror in anticipation before. Thus, he raised his other fist & smashed it into this mirror in rage, making sure not to try gripping at it & needing to get _more_ hand surgery taken care of when he returned to his still standing half of his golden mansion on the Bridle Path. Pushing the button on the tape machine, Dr. Funktime’s voice came through, laughing uproariously. After some fast-forwarding through the laughing, he began to actually speak:

“You did just what he thought you were gonna do! And you did! He paid _me_ a whole pack of Hi-C & $5 _Canadian_! As you can guess I’m already long gone & burning down the Strong will not stop me from having _permanently_ dyed your hair a bright pale Mimi pink! Guess when you rich assholes sleep in, they can get up _pretty early in the morning_ to pull shit like this!” the recording played, followed by more laughter. It would continue for five minutes of pure laughter. Though Andredactyl proceeded to fast-forward through more & more, it continued on until the tape stopped.

Storming out of the Strong, Dr. Mt. Shasta whispered to him on the self-driving ride home, telling him that Dr. Funktime would be found & personally executed or crippled severely in the course of several days of burning down his hideouts. The Strong was soon accidentally hit by lightning, several times & from the inside, somehow. Returning home into the still standing half of his golden mansion, Andredactyl swiped back his pale Mimi pink spiked hair & tried licking his thumb to try taming his bushy eyebrows. Finding little effect, he reasoned he’d deal with it later or shave them off, if needed. Firstly though, he walked to the magic artifacts room next to the attic storage & watched as lights snapped on dramatically. Walking forward, he picked a crimson red cape with golden trim & thin braided cord tie, he affixed it on over his coat, tugging the attached hood over his head & shouting into its velvety softness:

“Using the power of my priceless Basque Classical Wizard Cape! Vengangence will be _mine_ , once & for all! I will tear down what matters most to him! He cannot survive without what he needs most!” he started laughing himself among saying such.

Truly, the Prankless Prank War had indeed began. And nothing was ever going to be the same for Beaglesaurus…! Because at that very second, Beaglesaurus was dancing to the fine tunes of Phil Collins on the smash hit soundtrack to _Tarzan III: We’re Sorry for Tarzan II_ before he spun himself towards the kitchen to retrieve a bowl of grits with cheese & butter. Rolling his arms in circles, he began dumping instant packet grits with cheese into a tall bowl & began stirring it with a small metal spoon as he began adding dripped a splash of milk & more than a splash of water to give it something to enjoy. He sang along to the heavy dramatic swell as he closed both of his techno-organic eyes. Pressing one hand to the fridge door, he slid the bowl into the microwave & pushed a nominal amount that would it leave it at the correct thickness when he was finished. After a minute though, he found his power flickering. The lights flicked on & off as Swordsaurus made a final strike against a training dummy in the backyard. As the dummy twisted backwards with a deep strike across the chest. She turned away & smiled back at it. She was sure to unleash pain upon her opponent at the end of the month’s Kendō Bakudan Hotoke! Tournament. Taking his second favorite breakfast out of the microwave, he blew on it with both of his entirely techno-organic lips, setting it on the table gracefully. It would be another minute more before he could end up enjoying his fine bowl of grits without horribly scorching his tongue as Swordsaurus went about defeating two moving dummies & decided it would be best to fix the ones she had & got to work reassembling them. As she did, Alyssa dropped from a fire pole to better & quicker access the fridge, grabbing the gallon of milk set aside for her & chugged down approximately all of it before she used her inhuman strength to crush the empty plastic container into a fine powder, which she disposed of in the trash can with a dust of her hands.

“Morning, mijo! I was thinking of having dinner at Denny’s. It’s _always_ sunny at Denny’s, even when it’s dinner time! What do you think, mi pequeño héroe?” she offered as she started putting together a dozen-egg omelet together with some butter. She knocked on the window as she saw Swordsaurus was finishing up her work. She beckoned her inside, “Do you want me to cook you anything up?” she asked as Swordsaurus sauntered in & unzipped her boots, leaving them at the patio.

“I think I’ll be alright, I had three bowls of rice today. My training will be the greatest & I will win at the Expo!”

“That’s my girl! Te deseo suerte!”

“Gracias, Madre.”

Beaglesaurus poured the grits down his throat as he noticed the time on the clock & he knew he had to get back to Mei’s Workshop to get the Flossing Engine removed. Stylish as it was, it was certainly too dangerous to easily use in everyday bouts against criminal elements & their criminal implements, so he packed up his bag & began taking the ladder to the roof via the backyard, taking off from his house to glide to Mei’s place.

Emerging from his miniature operation, Mei closed the panels on his chest as she finished up the operation & finished unscrewing the main component of the Flossing Engine, reducing it to little more than a pile of parts that only she knew the complex, engineered origins & calibrations it needed to function properly. She would no doubt reuse this idea elsewhere. Once Beaglesaurus was flying back out to get some choice table at Denny’s for a sumptuous dinner of third breakfast, Mei unlocked her 8’ tall tungsten-carbide safe & revealed to herself Robosaurus 1.0’s new body. She had made sure the slender limbs & glaring eyes were exactly the match of famed internet superstar & world-class sommelier, Diluc Ragnvindr. She had purposefully made him just tall enough to still kiss without lifting herself off the ground (or requiring him to lift her) & she was excited for her most successful experiment yet!

At the Denny’s, Andredactyl was sitting in his Basque Classical Wizard Cape, his hood tucked low enough to not show his face as he hissed that he only wanted water for now while he “decided” on his food, knowing full well in his disturbed evil mind that he was just going to ask her vague questions about the food that will make him feign disappointment & then leave after having wasted his server’s time all too amply. After all, he had more important things to do. In the time he had spent preparing, he had learned the only spell he needed with a free seventeen-day trial for Spells.com, where you can get the best spells out there at a deliciously low price & even heftier ones if you subscribed to Spells.com Platinum Premium. It was sure to make you really tired & need to just take a _really_ long nap wherever possible & quickest at that. He began charging his spell & placed it on the underside of the Lobstersauruson Family’s table, then darted back to his seat to ask if you could get more ice in his single water, then waited until she was a booth or two away, then cleared his throat loudly & requested a straw as well. As Beaglesaurus & his family made their seats their own, he began carving a runic circle into his table with fork tines. Smacking it with his hand, Beaglesaurus felt a sudden jolt that unearthed something dark & mysterious at the very base of his soul, his skull tingling in arcane sensations of foreboding that were forbearing him from ordering tea for the table. Bagelsaurus ordered for him, getting him the Unconquearable Skillet with five meats, potatoes, four fried eggs sliced thinly into it, corned beef hash, bell peppers, onions, probably too much garlic & drizzled with a burgeoning Bernaise sauce. It was at this moment that the small door on the bell rang, accompanied by the whistle of wind in the torrid north of Neo-Oakland. However, as the recovering Archduke of the Skate Park lifted his entire techno-organic head to look, there was no one waiting to be seated or currently being seated. Suspicion began to creep into his favorite green mesh shirt as Andredactyl snickered quietly, just beyond keeping it to himself as he walked out & left an unhelpful tip of criticism, telling her to wait & see if someone asked for a straw next time. She had already been more than prepared to dump lye in his drink when he _had_ ordered something. But, Andredactyl was either far smarter than one to be caught in such a simplistic end, or was far too proud to think that he would actually fail at all. But it soon became clearer exactly why he was moving out & away at a rapid, but still human pace, pulling his wings inside his sleeves to hide within.

Beaglesaurus began to relax, feeling the aura of evil disperse with Andredactyl having moved on. His excessively indulgent skillet arrived and he drank a little cool water to help the possible spiciness or inherent heat of freshly cooked food before he drove his fork into one small chunk of potato & a nominal scoop of meats onto the remaining free space. Before it could come near his techno-organic lips though, there was, visible to Beaglesaurus’ telescopic visions, there was quicker than his vision then could _actually_ notice, a man in a black Lycra jumpsuit. He was being sneaky about it, but he had appeared out of _seemingly nowhere_ & glared deeply in Beaglesaurus’ eyes. It was bad enough that he was crouching directly in front of him, his eyes trying to stair deep into his soul, not blinking before he tugged his mask down & spat directly on to the forkful of food Beaglesaurus had in his hand. Another appeared cross from him, doing a Slavic squat as he tipped over the skillet, knocking it’s delectably indulgent contents to the floor of your basic Denny’s (which even when well-kept, is no place to enjoy a meal.) Two more appeared on the bar of the Denny’s & then stood up off of it to start kicking at his food to make sure it was particularly ruined. They each pulled their mask down to spit on his food.

“This is a message! Don’t ever try this again!” the leader of the Ninjas, Douglas Sarine, Hollywood’s most famous ninja (especially since they started filming movies again there) spoke at Beaglesaurus.

He held his finger out, pointing at Beaglesaurus’ head. The others did the same & they all disappeared into a single auburn leaf apiece. The server looked down at the skillet being knocked onto the ground & the safety holder used to hold the skillet had been stolen off of it. She gave Beaglesaurus a look of sheer disappointment & tired dismay before she walked to the back to get a cloth to pick up the still burning hot skillet which was already spat upon several times. When she returned, there was a manager with her. It was quickly explained that they would be paying for their food, paying for the skillet, which snapped in half when dashed to the ground, never returning & not getting any refills. Despite Beaglesaurus’ insistence that dark magic was at work here & that mystical ninjas were doing their best & brightest to ruin his life, not unlike the onslaught of lightning from Aridactyl, his family were clear that they could see nothing. Even Swordsaurus’ incredibly keen vision to notice anything in her peripheral vision, which was nigh over 190º, could not spot these mysterious attackers. However, most mysteriously, they noticed that the burning hot skillet would not have been thrown this hard to the floor without a full & tight grip. And yet… Beaglesaurus’ hands were soft, moisturized & well-manicured! It became more mysterious what these intruders were up to, but it was certainly not good. The next morning, Beaglesaurus went to fetch a box of Honey Smacks he bought the other day for personal cereal that the rest of his family would be sure to not impinge upon too deeply, lest it become known that they were weaseling into his personal stash, even if it was merely a stash of delicately sweetened puffed rice. Pouring himself a bowl, he turned to pick a spoon out of the dishwasher & looked back up to find his bowl had been cleaned, the milk had been poured back into the gallon jug & the cereal was placed in small equidistant positions across the surface of his sink’s bottom, each one soaked with enough water to make sure they would likely ooze down the drain upon contact. These Ninjas were indeed adept at doing this sort of thing expertly. He groaned & stormed back to the den to watch some _JAG_ & thought that he’d just make a sandwich later. It had been barely a little past ten, but by 11:45am, it was clear that he was getting hungry again (on account of not actually trying to eat anything since. To try to offset the black-suited offenders, he assembled both halves of air tall turkey sandwich with a myriad of cheeses & held each half in one hand, preparing to complete it by combining both while in his hands. He was certain his techno-organic sense of more than human speed could certainly ascertain the origin of an attack on something he was _physically holding_. However, when he pressed the mayonnaise dashed meats & cheese together like a deck of cards, he found no reaction. He took a bite & looked around suspiciously. Nothing happened. They weren’t there. Taking a much _larger_ bite, he soon regretted it, because it became unwieldy to chew & took some time to manage around his mouth. And what more, nothing still had occurred. He looked and saw that it was five past noon & finished his sandwich with a few more quick bites, deciding that he should get more Caesar dressing to splash on similar sandwiches that were yet to be conceptualized, constructed, conflated & completed for optimum enjoyment. He even took a snack size bag of Takis & began shoving a handful in his mouth. Realizing that this was not the correct flavor of Takis, he looked down & saw that he had merely collected the wrong bag… _or had he_? Were those Ninjas now moving things around just to make it seem like he was making the wrong decision or was he merely making an honest mistake & overthinking it _way too much_? To experiment both on what limits there were to all this, he decided to cook up a pack of grits in the microwave, only to find the second it beeped, a ninja with mildly burnt hands was holding it & dashed it to the ground. It seemed like there was an attraction to this food in particular. Beaglesaurus soon realized what this truly meant. These were no mere _normal_ grade Ninjas, assassins for hire that are rarely seen & move silently. These were something far worse… _Breakfast Ninjas_!

It was another few days of avoiding the most important meal of the day that Beaglesaurus realized that his strict schedule of waking up early in the morning & going to bed at a reasonable hour unless there was something good on TV would spoil his ability to eat well. He was going for hours without food. His family relented almost not at all in the face of what seemed to be some curse of jentacular assault, they went to IHOP anyways. Jumbolicious was more than understanding in pointing out to his son that _anything that wasn’t breakfast_ should’ve been fine. Accepting this reason, he attempted a prandial gambit to deceive the foolish Ninjas. He had soon received his food that he looked at his water. It looked like there were two drops of something red in it. He watched as they faded suddenly & he took a shaking hand to pick up the glass. However, Bagelsaurus had already reached for it, seemingly having decided that this may have been _her_ glass, due to being busy looking into how the identity of Steve Buscemi’s secret new lover was due to be announced soon, since it sounded like they could be an _official_ couple all too soon. He reached out over his fine Grilled Tilapia with Wild Rice & a Side Salad with a hearty French Dressing & gripped the glass, making sure his fingers wouldn’t wrap over his sister’s & earn her jabbing at them with her fork. She still picked her fork up & aimed it at him, gazing at him with a face that she would not be denied & began pulling the glass closer. He tried to pull it back.

“I think there’s something in your drink!”

“Quit being an idiot!” she retorted as he clambered over the table, the heel of his palm slipping on his tilapia, shoving it & a majority of his dinner onto the floor as he decided he would earn his sister’s wrath rather than the disappointment his parents would surely have if she were poisoned to death at an IHOP. He tilted the glass to the left, pouring it into his sister’s lap.

Alyssa had a quick hand in picking it out of Beaglesaurus’ hands & giving him a hard stare that would turn most mortal men to stone in a less than literal manner. Beaglesaurus could see her hand straining to hold onto it as Alyssa pulled the fork out of her quietly furious deathgrip she had on it & set it down.

  
“I was using _MiO_ , you dope!” Bagelsaurus said as she got up, squeezing her dress out on the remainder of the food on his plate & stormed off to the luckily far too powerful air dryer in the IHOP bathroom.

Beaglesaurus was feeling like a fool on a hill at this rookie mistake. He was getting paranoid at his meals being ruined one way or another that it was starting to get to him. He decided he would try to call the information line to see if there was anything to be learned about how to defeat Breakfast Ninjas. When Beaglesaurus tried his luck at sneaking a slice of strawberry from Bagelsaurus’ stack of scrumptious flapjacks with a side of brown sugar quinoa. A Ninja had appeared below him & stabbed him in the foot with a kunai blade. It was all too clear that these Ninjas were intent on making sure he enjoyed no part of the breakfast experience. Swordsaurus was able to lean over by shoving Beaglesaurus’ upper body to scoop the food off the ground & dumped it back onto Beaglesaurus’ plate, making sure that he’d be blamed entirely for this if the server found him lacking in professional idiom of a consumer in a place of service & product. He begrudgingly ate the tilapia anyways, not in defiance of his family not wanting him to get them kicked out of another breakfast general sit-down eatery, but in defiance to Andredactyl & defiance of the Breakfast Ninjas attempting to _prevent_ him from getting his morning combination of carbs or the rare treat of breakfast for other meals of the day or intermittent snacks. He wasn’t going to let Ninjas get to him or ruin his life. Going to bed that night after achieving four-hundred medium-intensity sit-ups to keep his core well-established, he thought that tomorrow… tomorrow he would figure this all out.

He would get a callback from the information line that informed him that there was one man capable of helping: Colonel Slaughter, Jr., the motivational drill sergeant & celebrity boot camp type. The son of American traitor & Former WWF Commissioner Sgt. Slaughter, Col. Slaughter, Jr. did run a convenient Brunch Boot Camp in the mid-morning at a campsite he had lived in & turned quickly into a mild desert landscape after tearing down the Eggspectation that was once there in downtown Neo-Oakland. The Colonel seemed to dress particularly like his father with a black singlet over a camouflage shirt thin enough to tear off in a raging display of exuberant masculinity, but had a much longer mustache that trailed over his face, looking like a small waterfall of hair coming out from his upper lip. Furthermore, he had a much nicer hat with a distinct display of national award & commendation. He wiggled his jowls as his eyes bugged out in a steaming fury that was held deep beneath his skin much like that of anyone in the military and on a razor’s edge from becoming a killing machine.

“If ya think ya can pull it off, there’s only way to tell! You need to _understand_ brunch! You need to _accept_ brunch! Breakfast is _dead_! And you know what will happen if you stick to breakfast?” he shouted incredibly loudly, turning his head so his nose was pointing down at Beaglesaurus, demanding an answer as he glared down with the unspoken yet restrained explosion that was a pair of eyes judging silently behind a pair of aviator glasses like his mother enjoyed so much.

“I die?”  
“YOU DIE!” he barked back, smiling & wagging a finger at him as if he were acknowledging that he gave the right answer, but that he was being a smart-ass while doing so, “You’re gonna learn the four tenets of brunch. The first is quiche! Quiche is basically an omelet with a pie crust on it. You can pretty much make a quiche with anything & everything you’d put in an omelet, but you just pour it in a pie crust & bake it in the microwave. It also tends towards more _savory_ flavors, which are more well-suited to the midday. You could easily have this for lunch or even a light dinner! There’s not a chance you’d prepare something so complex for breakfast though, would you? It would be _utter madness_!” he said, his eyes bulging out of his head as he began shaking Beaglesaurus by the shoulders.

“What else can be evolved into a midday meal that will chase away these Tuesday blues these black-suited maniacs are bringing my way every time I wanna get my taste buds on?”  
“The next lesson is one I can tell with my mystical third eye that you will be particularly invested in,” Col. Slaughter, Jr. expressed as he lifted a silver dining cover off a plate, revealing a thick medallion of meat, “What we do here is take the normal tastiness of grits & transform it to the superior form of _grillades_. It’s very simple. We take the meats, cut them into thick medallions, flour fry them in a roux & pair them with crushed tomatoes & over savory lunchy items. Then you merely pour them over a bowl of otherwise tasteless grits, even with cheese, can be given a heavier taste & flavor that attracts it to the station of lunch. SCALLIONS & A FINE GRAVY MADE OF THE BRAISED VEGETABLES INCLUDED MAKE FOR A FLAVOR THAT BRINGS THE WHOLE DISH TOGETHER!” he barked, drilling Beaglesaurus into begin swallowing it down. It’s tasty, spicy Louisiana flavor was indeed a spot to the taste of grits that he already excelled in enjoyment thereof.

“This is one of the greatest inventions of the ancient world!” Beaglesaurus cried, a fire burning now in his Neo-Robot Heart as he was invited to a world that defied the very belief that breakfast was what it could only be. This was a jovial new world of more savory dishes that you could enjoy at 10:30am to 11:55am.

“We are led to the true option of sugary brunch items: blintzes! Take generally anything you’d put on a pancake or crepe & then wrap into a tiny Jewish burrito & top it with compote or sour cream. It’s far too prepared to be a simple breakfast! And they’re not entirely filling by themselves! These even dare closer towards snacks then a true lunch, but you could enjoy them all the same as a side item! According to your profile, you’re not old enough to drink yet, so this means you get to escape the world of Caesars on the Rocks. For now, enjoy a fine sparkling water. And always remember: If it’s also _mostly bread_ , it will usually work for brunch as well. A bagel by itself is a controversial brunch, but valid in most areas, this one included. Take what I have taught you. The key is always an aloof fanciness that you’re casually enjoying yourself. You’re never _excited_ about brunch, but it _is_ almost always pleasant. GO OUT INTO THE WORLD & LEARN OTHER FORMS OF BRUNCH! SECOND BREAKFAST! ELEVENSES! THE WORLD IS YOURS!” Col. Slaughter, Jr. nodded softly to acknowledge that, for a day’s class investment & his check having been deposited into his account, this was all he could teach him at this time. We began to turn to dust & blow away in the wind, not knowing where the need to teach people about the wonders of brunch.

It would be another night’s sleep before Beaglesaurus could implement these lessons & sat in his kitchen from dawn to 10:30am & began heating up some freezer blintzes & put his feet up in an adjacent chair while inserting a SIM Card to download the most hilarious new meme, involving peppery being a new level of saltiness in professional failures at video games or other forms of popular competition. The Late Former General Keemstar was considered to be the Father of Pepper & the Pepperiest Gamer was a title sought by only the most forsaken of themselves. The Ninjas appeared, quietly standing before him. Douglas Sarine drew his wakizashi sheathed & held it out, bowing to Beaglesaurus.

“You have freed us from Andredactyl’s control. We are now to use our powers to take revenge on the one who used us for such callous treatment. The punishment shall fit the crime & he shall learn the mistake of using dark magicks to try to control the wild heart of the Ninjas!” he cried as they soon poofed away in a cloud of smoke.

Later that evening, Beaglesaurus was enjoying grillades & grits as a generally enjoyable snack & learned from Jumbolicious’ well connected newspapers that Andredactyl’s 202X Toyota GR Supra was stolen by rowdy Ninjas. At the Andredactyl’s Former House Memorial Restaurant (a Ruby Wednesday built on the former site of half of Andredactyl’s golden mansion, now a posh, if tragic, place to pick up an acceptably slumming meal if you were one of the Bridle Path socialites. Many fedoras & trench coats were donned in anticipation of simpler pleasures of sit-down dining until the Ninjas soon collided his Toyota GR Supra into the side of the kitchen, making sure to get plenty of tire tracks across the floor & dumping canola oil on the ground & spitting in it. The Ruby Wednesday Andredactyl’s Former House Memorial Restaurant lost its popularity rather quickly due to not being able to produce food & because it had generally burned down by then. Beaglesaurus nodded sagely into the middle distance, thinking how proud he was of the Ninjas, before hearing they were arrested for using ninja equipment & wearing ninja garb without a license from the local Ninja Union chapters. If there was one thing that the cops & legitimate organized ninjas hated in Neo-Oakland, it was _unlicensed_ Ninjas ruining their good name & causing a _ruckus_ or, even worse, a _rumpus_! And finally, across town, Andredactyl sneered furiously as he usually did when he found out he lost, ripping his dramatic rotary phone (used mostly for its dramatic effect so the music would swell behind him in anticipation to see who it was he was talking to) & threw it out the window. Unknowingly, Invisible Man Rick Moranis was struck by it & lost all memory of his former life of music & comedic film star, deciding that he must live a dangerous life on the run from then forward. He still has yet to be seen lately.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter II — _Beaglesaurus & Hope’s Enjoyably Pleasant Day Out _**or ** _The Prankless Prank War Abduction Deduction Reduction for Luncheon Functions!_**

A week later, it was clear to Andredactyl that the Breakfast Ninjas being released from their spell, the Basque Classical Wizard Cape was functionless once more & he threw it into his fireplace where he was gazing dramatically, naturally only thinking of revenge & how best to implement it.

“If my superior sister can manage to nab all of his idiotic family because they overate, I could do it all the same. Or even better! I’ll show her I’m the superior sibling to her by doing it in broad daylight! There’s no way that I can lose! Andredactyl Gonzales doesn’t do tea-drinking, anything with spinach in it & venganzos!” he cried dramatically to the heavens.

That morning, after he woke up at his usual time of 12pm, Andredactyl rang the doorbell to Beaglesaurus’ home, which he found on a public Beaglesaurus Fan Club still run by Gabbi & Maya. Alyssa opened the door & looked down at him. He decided immediately that a woman of this size & temperament was not going to be his subject of theft. He took approximately twenty minutes to flirt with her, which only generally confused Alyssa, who invited him in anyways, thinking he was a friend of Beagle’s & led him to the den to wait, setting down a thin cork coaster & a tumbler full of slivered ice in water for him to move. She would go to see Beagle to find if there was a way of getting rid of his uncomforting friend or, if and when it came out that he probably wasn’t friends with him, he could bludgeon him with something until he left & certainly didn’t return. As she went to do so, the superspeed supervillain flashed forward from his seat just after removing the coaster & snapping it in half. Rushing to the living room, he saw Jumbolicious Lobstersaurus. He was consumed in his usual chair, but seemed to be carrying an aura of dark fury, a deep inner emotion that would be sure to give him just the correct manner of intensity of spirit that it would be sure to barrel through even the hardest of Andredactyl’s capability. He struggled internally, trying his best to tell himself that it would merely be too irritating in nature to go about having attempted his first instinct upon noticing him in such a torrid of feeling. He slank his way to the staircase & decided to invest in one of his sisters instead. Below, Jumbo merely continued reading his paper, now finished with the Sunday Funnies, which always boiled a deep inner joy within him, his aura of intensive power abating as he turned the page.

  
While Alyssa was looking downstairs again to find where her son was, she found Andredactyl gone & a ring forming on the couch-reaching coffee stand. She would decide to similarly keep an eye out for him as she began to head to the basement. Andredactyl braced both of his superhuman pterosaur wings in front of himself & crashed through Swordsaurus’ door. He soon found that she wasn’t home, which was due to her being at practice in the quad down the way doing her katas. Alyssa was now more than certain upon coming upon the broken door that this wasn’t a friend of her son’s as she pressed in through the high door, blocking most of it. Next to her, Bagelsaurus was standing, having been irritated by the noise he was making, independent from his reason for being there or the damage to her sister’s room. They mostly expressed this by intimidatingly tapping steel pipes in their hands, approaching Andredactyl, & beating him mercilessly in the left leg, quickly reducing his already bone surplussed foot to having rather many more moving interior parts then needed. They grimaced at him, their chins projected as they glared down at him & opened the window, dumping him off the sheer drop out the second-story window. They continued their free expression of ideals in the dictatorship of their anger as they spat on him from as far as they could. Alyssa started tearing the steel pipe into thick chunks & throwing them at him until Andredactyl hid behind a cedar tree & pressed his right Croc against the trunk, taking off at half his normal speed being unable to make the clearest takeoff with an injured foot.

“Si regresa, le quitarán las cejas de una manera dolorosa!” Alyssa fumed in a powerful battlecry as Bagelsaurus pulled her back in from the window before they destroyed their neighbor’s arboreal ambitions with thick shards of sharp, jagged metal.  
“He’s gone, Mom, don’t you worry. If I see him again, I’ll hit him with his own shoe! He’ll fall like Marc Mero! No one messes with my sister but me!” she said, shaking her fist out the window threateningly. She had certainly meant it.

Not seeing him escape into the yard across from them due to enjoying a relaxing ice-cold towel on his head & face, Beaglesaurus mistook Andredactyl for a local street cat & went in to the house, coming back from a convenient mid-morning brunch session. Truly brunch had taught him a great deal about life & its limitations & strengths & he had adopted it quickly on a long-term rebound from breakfast. Jumbolicious had set his paper aside into the fireplace where it would burn on cold winter nights (or whenever he felt like wrapping yellow tinfoil around a tasty sweet potato to enjoy their hearty taste in any season he could manage) & clapped a meaty hand onto Beaglesaurus’ techno-organic back.

“I was hoping that since your mother has a PTA meeting & I’m going to pick up Swordsaurus, you could watch Hope for us while we’re gone. In fact, we were thinking she wasn’t feeling hungry for lunch & dinner is still a few hours away, so she can have a largish snack out on the town or go to Billford’s for one of those footwide cookies. Whatever she thinks is best as long as it’s less than $7, anything more will be too sugary or too filling,” Jumbo told his son as he handed upon him a grouping of three American dollars of currency, two ones & a five.

He gave him forty pennies in a heavy rubber egg-shaped coin purse (in case they needed change) & Beaglesaurus dropped the whole tiny coin purse into the pocket of his fine leather pants. He walked all the way entirely down the stairs to his sister’s room & found Hope was taking a short nap before she yawned adorably & slipped her usual going-out red sweater over her usual dress & her going-out shoes over her going-out socks. Beaglesaurus patted her softly on the head after she brushed her hair so as best to not muss it up too much. She smiled & happiness was the encounter of Beaglesaurus’ day.

However, this was relatively common when Hope was around to brighten up any room or bring sunshine into the darkest of moods. Hope & Beagle went downstairs & they went out to enjoy the life of Neo-Oakland & pick up some footwide cookies at Billford’s Sarnies, downtown, without flying of course. Taking the east way there to get in some good local sights, they stopped at Bathurst & Lakeshore to look at the large fountain & flick pennies into it. As they did, four ‘80s Street Toughs emerged from the fountain, snapping their fingers & flicking out pocketknives. They grin widely & shove at each other as they approach Beaglesaurus while Hope is still throwing most of her father’s pennies into the fountain.

“Welllllll, looks like someone wants to have some fuuuuuun!” One of the Street Toughs said, in a high-pitched nasally voice as he shoved another Street Tough by the face. His jangling studded leather jacket was dripping with chains & also with water as he stepped out of the fountain, his knife pointed at Beaglesaurus.  
“I don’t have any money on me & also I can definitely kick your ass.”

The Street Toughs all made high-pitched noises to challenge his conjecture of martial superiority as they swiped back their greasy hair, wearing open jackets with nothing underneath, headbands, uncomfortable-looking wristbands & leather pants, not unlike our hero.

“I can respect your style, but I’m not here to cause trouble & I’m out with my sister. You can’t just go around harassing people with knives for cheap cash, that’s no way to live!”  
“Eeeeeh, we’re lazy, we prefer challenging norms by using force to get money from people due to a vast disillusionment with the slavish body of the corporate ethos defining us. Similarly, we deride the overtly classist ideal of working our fingers to the bone via manual labors in a so-called ‘honest job,’ leading to an old age owned by those who decide our work for us at the cost of the health of the body! We are young & strive for the easiest path in life, whereupon we divulge the true mysteries of the world through our cheap & simple lifestyle. Surely, we may burn out or be dragged away for our crimes, but isn’t it the point of youth to live freely? To derive our pleasures how we see fit? Perhaps the world of the senior is not one that we understand, nor tolerate, but indeed, it is one we reject. Was it not the great Lao Tzu who said ‘The candle that burns twice as fast, burns half as long?’” one offered in a surprisingly erudite & eloquent soliloquy about his choices in life, only to be knifed in the side by one of his fellow Toughs.  
“Yeeeeeah, you tell em, Stripes!” the offending Tough snickered as Stripes stabbed him in the back. Undeterred by their asymmetrical knife wounds, they laughed to each other & patted each other on the backs before they drew their knives out with a grimace of the eyes & cheeks & a grunt of sharp effort as they were pulled back, “Yeah, so we’re serious, kiddo! You can’t ascribe labels to us or we’ll cut you!”

In their fervor of youthful violence, they hadn’t noticed that Hope had dwindled her father’s collection of disposable currency in childhood wishes deposited in the fountain as she turned back towards them. She smiled to them & their hearts melted. Their hand dropped their knives like forks being discarded after the eater had found out they’d been poisoned by an adopted family pet with cruel ideations as to their newly inherited fortune. Their lives crashed against them like waves against the cold hard concrete of the dockside, sending them asunder & scuttled on the shores of their own iniquities.

“Ya know, it’s really never been my idea that my actions were causing more harm than good. I am perpetuating the same problems that I rail against! The world is due to leave me behind because I can’t fall into any kind of system. Being outside of the system will never improve it, but altering the system from the inside is how any change is meant to happen! We can’t just spend our lives slashing passersby for chump change! We need to impress on other members of our social strata that our lives are our own through activism & hard work towards a common goal! Come on, guys! Let’s build ourselves a youth centre where we can teach kids what we feel like! We can instruct them against the haphazard world of labor slavery & corporate shackles from a place of surety & peace! Surely we would have wasted ourselves in a dank prison hole had our actions continued & we thank you for your shining personality bringing us this deep internal catharsis!” Stripes announced.

Changed men, the ‘80s Street Toughs departed. Beaglesaurus decided to drop their knives into a local recycling bin after closing each one so they wouldn’t hopefully just pop into the hands of unsuspecting trash-picking itinerants or local sanitation waste workers. He held Hope’s hand as they crossed the street & they made their way up the hill to Billford’s Sarnies. After a few moments of mild physical exertion (made that much more so by having to carry his sister half the way there,) they arrived at Neo-Oakland’s most relatable sandwich eatery. As he enjoyed a deep-fried Twinkie & Hope enjoyed herself a tasty foot-wide cookie with a carton of banana milk (the most appreciated of milks available to the world in the Lobstersaurus House.) Beaglesaurus looked about a bit & noticed a peculiar smell of Classic Weed, not unlike that of the late Tommy Chong. Finding harsher smells approaching all the more with his techno-organic nostrils, he soon heard the jangle of the bell downstairs & looked over the ornamental parapets atop Billford’s, next to his usual sandwich spot which had luckily been replaced with a similar, but far less noble plastic folding table & matching folding chairs. The door to the rooftop burst open as five particular disheveled fellows bedraggled their way out of it. Each of them wore a heavy odor of self-neglect, eyes of bloodshot intensity, headbands with many peace symbols on them & naturally, picket signs in their hands.

“Hippies?” Beaglesaurus noted, to himself.

“Look here, man! The deal that you’re jiving us with is that you, like, express that you’re all about justice & taking the law into your helpful hands, but there’s a harsh Charles that you’re pushing on us, dude!” said the leader of the Angry Hippies, his eyebrows glaring over his red & blue lens glasses as he continued, “You don’t, like, get the true nature of peace! You are constantly obsessed with justice through your own brand of controversially helpful crime-fighting has little to no basis in the ways of mercy & the tenets of joyful living, bro!”  
“I’m not sure I follow…” Beaglesaurus said as he began cracking his knuckles intimidatingly & assuming a default stance for inevitable trouncings that would be unleashed upon them post-haste.  
“Like, your problem is that you solve all your problems with either weird, cringeworthy nonsense or brutal fights that make you seem like a dangerous, violent individual who only understands peace through the means of death, anguish & torture of others!”  
“Yeah… I get my hands dirty sometimes. Sometimes I don’t get a choice in the matter. You guys do. You don’t have to try me.”  
“Naw, man, we’re not big on fighting, despite the boiling ire that flames brightly in our hearts, we are still not a fighting people.”  
“So what’s your big idea on how to make me see ‘the error of my ways’ & convince me? Are you gonna whip out the acoustic guitars & play Wonderwall? What do you guys have that you think is gonna change my mind any?”  
“Well, we were gonna continue with a drawn-out argument about peaceful resolution, talking down your enemies, calm arrests without limbs being removed & generally a treatise of ways to try to get through these battles of the heart & mind through activism, ideals of virtue & the constant occupation of a staunch moral high ground based in the knowledge that you are better than having to strike people to teach them a lesson they can learn from good-natured kindness & help with their emotional problems … But then we decided that you were probably gonna be itching for a fight anyways, so we decided we were just going to crowd on you, dogpile on & then drill a huge hole in your femur the size of a quarter with a spade bit on this power drill…” the Angry Hippie Leader declared as he drew an impact hammer power drill & the others started moving about behind him, attaching its plug to an extension cord & looking for an outlet they weren’t going to easily find on a rooftop eating establishment that was more portrayed healthily the Neo-Oakland skyline & the beautiful sunsets that sink down over the town.

As two of them wandered downstairs to find an outlet & attached a second extension cord to their first one & managed to plug it in next to one of the cushy seats inside, the Angry Hippie Leader clicked the power switch on his drill again & revved it.

“Oh, there we go!” he said as the other two began to tromp back upstairs to continue this.

Before they could convene or converge, Hope stood adamantly in front of him in a sudden rush forward, holding her arms out to their full wingspan as she gave them & gave them a hard stare of disapproval. The Angry Hippies looked on at her impressive, if not necessarily practical attempt at protecting her older brother. A single tear drew down the Angry Hippie Leader’s face as he looked into the upper distance.

“Man… What am I doing? Embracing the very violence I abhor to try to establish the inherent lesson that it is wrong is a forfeiture of the moral high ground I so readily plop myself upon! Our own philosophy is based on foolishness & our own prideful ideas that we were the ones that society cast out! We knew that the common life of working for the Man was always a danger to be avoided, but now we have become the monsters that we once scoffed at so many times in incredulity. Perhaps the real lesson is that we cannot achieve anything through inaction & though violence is never a good answer, we still are defining ourselves through nothing but our own freedom that belies a life of struggle & coldness, united only in a drug-induced stupor that we mistake for our own enlightenment! What could be explained as the great theories of mental expansionism could just as well be another form of us buying into the same systems that create the abuses we detest! I now understand my path in life. Hey, dudes, I’m thinking of giving up this lifestyle of smug rejection of society’s mores through my own, & therefore our own, rejection of the social standards that society demands of anyone. I begin to ponder that our social degradations are now based in our own movement against what is considered American standards of hygiene that we don’t live up to in a way to establish our uniqueness & a return to the pastoral ideals of Eurasian nomadic lifestyles that we have been found wanting on. We’re gonna get together & start up a bookstore! If we want to send a message, we can be diligent in portraying it with pride in our self-image. Though we can live by our own standards where the opinions of others challenge us to ‘do more’ or work towards the common goals of life, we can still treat ourselves on an even footing with others! We gotta shape up! We gotta get our message out there & we gotta start doing it like adults! Come on, bros, let’s boogie on outta here…” the Formerly Angry Hippie Leader offered.

Dumping the power drill over the side of the parapets, the extension cord wrapped around one of the Hippie’s ankles & he slipped down the stairs. The other Hippies carried him out, leaving their articles of discount torture. Beaglesaurus patted his sister appreciatively on the head & smiled at her, proud of her help that she was so ready to provide.

“That was very brave of you, Hope. I don’t know how really, but you showed those guys how life can have many avenues.”  
“I did?”  
“Hope, this is why you can’t do drugs until you’re much older…” he noted as he popped a piece of Weed 3 Gum out of his pocket, enjoying the burst of creativity & mild neurological pleasantry it provided.  
“If it makes me act like those guys, they can’t be worth it, can it?” Beaglesaurus shrugged in response.  
“The problem is is that feeling good is a valid thing to want & sometimes it can achieved through the gifts of the world. But some of those can be dangerous even in this advanced year of 202X! Not knowing what you’re getting into or believing just anyone about drugs can lead you down a path that could do real bad stuff to your body!”  
“I have learned much, big brother…” she noted, her mind already all of a knot from these overly complicated philosophical treatises with little understanding herself. I mean, who could?

Heading back to the road to the Lobstersaurus House, three tall stocky men in sharp black suits & matching fedoras walked by them. They gave mild sneers in response to Beaglesaurus’ general head movement of acknowledgment he’d provide to anyone he passed on the street. In a move that only someone with techno-organic telescopic vision could achieve, one of the tall men shifted suddenly towards Beaglesaurus’ side, just enough to create an eclipse of limbs for his shoulder to bump into Beaglesaurus’.

“Oooooh!” the man suddenly groaned, falling over to the sidewalk nearby.  
“Is he okay? Are you okay?” Beaglesaurus asked of his fellows, then louder, to him.  
“What are ya talkin’ about, you chump?! Ya ran right inta me! I think from this fall alone, I may’ve shattered my humerus in several places & it’s all your fault!”  
“I mean, I didn’t do it on purpose today…”  
“Yeah, well uh… purposes don’t fix my arm, do it?” the man offered as his two friends began looming over our hero & his sister, “I oughta call the fuzz about this, shouldn’t I? Tell ‘em you charged right at me!” he snarled in a heavy New York accent.  
“I mean, you don’t really have any proof I ran into you…”  
“I saw it!” the second man spouted, his gaze not leaving Beaglesaurus.  
“Yeah, I saw it too!” the third one groaned as the man on the ground began howling loudly in an approximation of horrible pain.  
“Ooooof! I can’t believe the pain! This really hurts! I can’t believe ya’d just walk directly into me completely on purpose like that!”

The two tall men near them began huddling closer as they smirked at Beaglesaurus.

“Maybe you oughta’ pay him. He’ll need at least a little scratch to get by, what wit’ his arm being horribly mangled by ya violent outburst, eh?” one offered.  
“Maybe you oughta’ pay him a very nice amount of money so’s we don’t go about telling anyone this happened, eh?”

They spoke in unison now, “Or maybe we, uh… might find a way to let someone else know about this ‘accident’ ya started…”

This was further punctuated as the Modern Gangsters lurked about him & the Modern Gangster on the ground was beginning to foam from the mouth. As he started shaking on the ground, his moans now debased into guttural barks of faux distress, blood began slowly leaking from the corners of his eyes.

“Yeah, ‘dis kinda thing happens a lot, sometimes… Our friend what be yonda’ is a guy of eh… pretty weak constitution. He don’t take enough Vitamin B12, so his bones are frail, ya know? Maybe you oughta’ pay up faster before he starts lookin’ real bad!”

The Modern Gangsters snicker as they hold their hands out, the third one stopped moving, his hand in the air demanding silently that quick cash be plopped into it. His motionlessness made it seem less like he was asking for anything more than a quick embalming before it got stuck that way. The Modern Gangsters, taking entire seconds to realize that Beaglesaurus’ stoic, but frustrated face & his bold crossing of arms in front of his chest being indicative of him not buying into their bullshit, they started a flurry of offensive attacks, mildly poking at him in the ribs.

“Eh, come on. This guy really needs ya dough if he’s gonna survive this. Look at ‘im! He’s basically bleedin’ out & ya not payin’ up already?” they noted with their jagged assault of irritating jabs jostling him.  
“I’m not giving you any money,” Beaglesaurus bluntly stated as he tried to stare the two down. He had not inherited the “hard stare” that his mother & sisters were more capable of unleashing upon the foolish for their stark shows of impoliteness.  
“Welp, we tried!” the two Modern Gangsters shrugged & turned around to seemingly walk away.

However, whenabouts they went about doing so, the man formerly on the ground was not longer stationed upon it in what he purported to be final moments from a mild nudge on the sidewalk & an exaggerated & visibly softened fall to the barely lukewarm ground. He was now next to Beaglesaurus, a revolver pressed into the base of his techno-organic spine, which even a point blank shot do some less than minor amount of damage.

“Alright, ya got me. I’m actually a fine healthy man wit’ a decent constitution & a mild sensitivity to pollen & ragweeds. But the real thing here is that I want money from you, because I have a gun. And nothing is stronger than a gun,” he reasoned, unreasonably.

It was then that Hope yanked at his pant leg & crosses her own arms, pouting along with her hard stare. This was a combination that few could take lightly. As he turned towards her, he saw the look on her face & horror began to overcome his face. The other two Modern Gangsters had turned back around &, naturally, were also holding guns until they looked slightly to the side of their accomplice & saw Hope’s face. They dropped their guns to the ground, clenching their heads in sorrow as they fell to their knees. Beaglesaurus reached suddenly into his wallet & took out four $2 bills.

“Alright, look. I don’t want trouble, this is basically all the cash I feel like giving to you, go buy a milkshake & just try this again with someone else later. I’m not giving this to you because I think you deserve it or because I feel threatened, I just don’t want to hear a speech,” he said, making it very clear with his entire face that he would be cross with them if they started.  
“And stop being naughty to me & my brother!” Hope ordered of them.

They twisted their hats into mildly sweaty cord in their silent contrition & nodded.

“Yeah, alright, let’s beat it. I’m opening a liquor store. You guys want in?”  
“Meh” the other two replied & followed him, willing to certainly pay into his primordial business plan, but wanting to see the location he had in mind or at least a list of items he intends to stock with comparative maps on their market value & whatever fresh new ideas he could bring to the table about them. But not just yet.  
“Hope, let’s get you home, today is getting annoying & weird.” Hope nodded in agreement as two sudden streaks of vapor trail appeared in the setting sun’s ochre glare upon Neo-Oakland.

In bursts of compressed air & whooshing machinery, a jetpack landed suddenly in front of Beaglesaurus as he started getting a tension headache from the characters approaching him at all hours of the day.

“Look, I’m a block away from my house, if you want to start something or you want to start some kind of fight, just let me take my sister home first, alright? We can settle this like reasonable people that you presumably want to beat the shit out of! So, how about we just—” he began, only for loud, angry shouting to outburst over his placid tone of hopeful conciliatory appeasements.  
“Why would I want anything from a lame, irritating poor person like yourself, Beaglesnorus?” the figure said, after lifting up off his painfully damaged leg. Whirling around, the figure faced them, clearly Andredactyl Gonzales.  
“Look, literally let me just walk forty feet past you, I’ll just put her on the doorstep & ring the doorbell. We can have a fight or a challenge or whatever dumbass thing you want to try to start with me today alone.”  
“Get bent, loser! I came here to do more than waste my time fighting someone I’m already about four times faster than. I’m tired of this Prankless Prank War that you so graciously started, dickbrain, so I’ve decided I’m going to have to make you stop!”  
“How do you think you’re going to do that, huh?” Beaglesaurus said, taking another default animation of fighting preparedness.

Smirking as always, Andredactyl whipped around Beaglesaurus’ back & returned to the spot where he was, resting his horribly injured leg on his own personal jetpack. In one hand, he was holding Hope Elise Lobstersauruson by the nape of her red sweater collar. She soon became tangibly aware of her situation as she started wiggling in protest. She turned towards him, giving him the hardest stare she could muster, her lip protruding in a complete show of her disappointment. A man of any true morals may have dropped dead on the spot at a look like this. Andredactyl, though, was no man like that.

“I’m taking your sister! Here’s how it’s going to go from now on! I keep her as my personal hostage & you don’t bother me or my sister anymore from now on… And in exchange, I’ll be extra certain to teach her the great wonders that are capitalism, profits, income & the bottom line! She will become corrupted by the Gonzales influence on her! She will be just as prideful (as we social gods are naturally valid to point out for you) & she will be everything you detest! A greedy, snobbish debutante with no compassion for anyone!” he announced, laughing madly as he flung his head back, “So then, you back down like the soft of heart goody-goody that you are or embrace the truth that other people merely hold you back!”  
“Aren’t you always hanging around your sister?”  
“My sister knows just as well as I do that if she stopped being as superior as me, I’d lose all respect for her & she’d be cast out of the brilliance that is the Gonzales Estate, the Earthly Delight!”  
“Well, now it’s more like a Muddy Delight, isn’t it?”  
“I’ll have it rebuilt soon enough! You should be more worried about your sister’s health, good natures & sanity! All these useless ideas that people without money strive for! I can throw away all these stupid ideals & live a life where I get what I want because I can take it! I’m the one who runs things around here & you’re the one who is going to be kowtowing to see her demurely wave at you once a week from the balcony of her superior gilded cage!”  
“My shoe’s untied…” Hope muttered.  
“Where we’re going, you won’t need shoes with failures like cheap little fraying ropes holding them together! True patricians like me & mine understand very well that such things are a waste of time when you can just utilize slip-on shoes! This will be the first lesson of many in how to be a person of real worth around here!” Andredactyl scoffed as he set her on the ground, going to snag his sharp black fingernails into the threads of her red woolen jumper.

And yet, before he could, red & blue lights flashed down the street. A black car came speeding quickly towards them, their high beams on blindingly bright. In a quick single combination of movements, Beaglesaurus reached forward to grip his sister by her sweater’s shoulders & flipped backwards, whipping himself backwards as the car suddenly shifted & barreled towards them. In a moment of Andredactyl being caught unawares, it was when the car slammed the bumper into his solar plexus, sending him flying backwards as his already injured leg crashed into the rough corner of a local brownstone, making a horrible crack like a thick roll of bubble wrap being oscillated on a lathe. His spine was to a lesser extent suffering from horrible pain of colliding into a solid brick wall after being stricken with a moving vehicle charging at 67 mph. Andredactyl shrieked in pain as he struggled to get to at least his own functional leg now. When the horn of the car suddenly sounded, he was thrown off again as the car pulled into the alleyway Andredactyl was now splayed generally in the mouth of. Two wheels managed to catch his already horrendously crushed leg as they parked in place & exited the vehicle. A portly man with little glasses & relatively mulleted hair looked over & made a high-pitched groan of distate.

“Agent K, I think we hit someone,” he noted, bluntly.  
“Do not worry, Agent N. He is not Beaglesaurus, so it is less important,” a text-to-speech program from the other man’s phone spoke aloud.

The second man who had exited, the passenger, was a relatively thin Asian chap with similarly stylish glasses. Both were dressed in professional looking navy blue suits with white dress shirts underneath. Agent N was sporting a tie with a messy orange paint spattering on jagged zigzagged black and white bars of colors. Agent K’s looked like it had dancing foxes in a pattern, but upon closer looks, the bottom tip was drenched in wet blood. He began typing again.

“I don’t remember whose this is,” the program spoke as he typed.  
“Well, best not to get too worked up about it, that’ll come out with some club soda!” Agent N said as he patted a heavy leather gloved hand on his back, gleefully smiling.

When Beaglesaurus looked back, Andredactyl had left a very conspicuous trail of blood spatter from this vehicular assault, though it mattered little. He knew where to find him. He looked over Hope & found she was perfectly fine.

“Good jump!” she said, smiling at him.  
“Good job holding on. And thanks for everything today. You’ve really helped me out of a pickle or two this time. You were very smart having him set you down like that,” Beaglesaurus said with a snicker as the two agents stepped closer.

He smiled at his sister again, noticing her velcro strap shoes & sat down for a minute.

“So… what’s your story then?” he asked of them.

They both patted their chests & then their pants & then each other before Agent N made a knowing nod. He made a Fonzie type of noise & knocked on the trunk of his car, revealing a pocket on each end. Out of it, they retrieved two wallets, showing off a shiny golden badge that read “Department of the Interpol, Global Special Agent” on each.

“We have a few questions… and we need your help with something…” Agent K’s program spoke.


	11. Chapter 11

**Part IV of VI?:**

**The Filthy Frank Transhumanist Separatist Revolution Era Begins…** _**NOW**_ **!**

 **Chapter I —** _**The East Fran**_ _ **kish**_ _**Connection**_ or _**Debriefing from Interpol**_ _**HQ**_ _**: Mission START!**_

“ I guess I do owe you guys something for dropping my sister off at our house,” Beaglesaurus nodded to the two unorthodox Interpol Agents as they began driving for Neo-Pearson Airport.

This was important work for sure as they took off at the tarmac, peeling out with a jerk of the hand brake & a double donning of stylish sunglasses that did little to help now that the Sun was down. Luckily, following an incredibly loud refueling of a Concorde 5 made for an easy target for ears to tell legs what to do & where to get & their way was made there fast enough. With the waving of cone-shaped wands & people talking on radios to one another, the supersonic turbojet sped off to Lyon, the capital of East Francia. It had been four years since that parting factions disagreeing over the true meaning of the final words of the legendary director Jean-Luc Godard split the Sixth Republic of France asunder once more. The Kingdom of West Francia, led b y Grand Prince David Guetta were, with some care taken, on an armistice from active war so far, but tensions were weak. The dying words of Godard’s were intrinsically confusing & contained several paragraphs of riddles & many forcible contusions of the English, French & Swahili Languages. Michel Gondry watched a video of it & a pair of shoes was all they found in the aftermath of the ensuing constitutional crisis & clearing away of the rubble . It was said to be dangerous to those who were just not ironic enough to get it & toxic to those of weak constitution. Thus, their Concorde landed in Lyon-Saint Exup é ry Airport & were soon taking more appropriately French Matra Murena to the less than subtle glistening dark crystalline shine that was Interpol HQ. Therein, he was walked to a room with a pleasant soft white infinity within. Amid it by sharp contrast was a black pianoforte with a cow next to it. Sitting at the piano was current Pr emier Ministre Jean Reno of East Francia & a tall leather rolling computer chair was sat several feet from him, facing away from the door & from Beaglesaurus’ current stance. Agents N & K returned with five folding chairs, enough for Beaglesaurus to have a place to sit down & a place for them to both sit & put their feet up. A stream of smoke drifted off of PM Reno’s cigarette between his fingers. A match one of fatter sense & more intent slithered from the mouth seemingly situated on the tall chair before the door was shut and locked. Reno turned back & took a drag off of his loosie before he lifted his sunglasses off of his entirely human head with an entirely human hand. The chair swung around, showing a man with a messy brown mullet held back by a thin bandana with a lemniscate imprinted near his right temple.

“Welcome Mr. Lobstersauruson. My name is Colonel SD Robert Plissken, President-General of Interpol. However, due to the secretive nature of this mission, from here you will refer to me as my personal code name, ‘Biggest Boss.’”

The Agents held their hands below their waist & pointed them at Beaglesaurus, waving them back & forth to indicate this was not necessary & that he would be embarrassing themselves to go about such a lofty title. Their heads facing him, they make a similar motion of their eyes darting left to right & stony apprehension the soup de jure of their cumulative countenances.

“With my current work managing the crimes & arrests needed to be made during the North American Wars, investigating gun running in Northern Cyprus, stopping the Djibouti drug trade & refining the perfect ragu sauce, we’ve found that all that, along with my administrative responsibilities, my third son being born in three weeks, being two weeks from retirement, my twin children graduating from college & moving out, my collection of Beanie Babies finally being completed with the Happy Meal Edition Lobster Franz, & finally having quit vaping today, I cannot find the time to fully involve myself in a newer case.” To make this clearer, he gripped the vape cartridge in one leather-gloved hand & crushed it mercilessly with a biomechanical servo grinding with the force of his grip. Dropping the jagged shards of machine to the floor, concentrated vape fluid sent off a concertedly douchebag smell that pervaded the room of indeterminate dimensions. He wheeled his chair off a few feet to the right of the spill & a slat opened in the wall, depositing a foldable table that he soon released from its furled nature & slapped a large Interpol badge sticker on the front.

“Agent Gabriel Logan Newell is here to your left, you may recognize him from the Syphon Filter & Half Life Missions of the early 0Xs. Due to very long term case he’s working on, he will not be able to assist you on this mission we have in mind for you, my fellow full-blooded American lad.”

“I’m not full-blooded. This Neo-Robot Heart keeps a little more than the normal lad has in his less than epic circulatory system, buzz kings. What about the Living Brain over here?” Beaglesaurus offered, leaning his elbows on his thighs & daringly pointing his chin at Agent K.

“Agent Kojima Hideo, though certainly capable of great work, is far too costly to invest in at this time. His requirements to deploy are high, but certainly a last resort. To be fair, with the current madness in the Urals & China falling apart again, this is a dangerous world. I’m shocked & mildly disgusted that you were so willing to believe two random men in dark suits saying they work for us just because they have badges. They might have even just made those themselves!” the eyepatched man puzzled, lacing his fingers together, “I think you might need to do this yourself with a little invitation behind the curtain, a few free rides, a fully stocked minibar, a gun you can hide in a thigh holster & a $140 gift card to the Cheesecake Factory. If all goes well, this shouldn’t take more than 48 hours plus traveling time on a speedy Concorde 5 trip back again. We are, in fact, just low enough on agents that you are, by far, the person most histrionic & flashy enough that we know all too well you could not manage to betray us, and that’s saying something about the state of the world, now isn’t it, soldier? What do you say, Beaglesaurus? Are you a bad enough dude to save the Second Great Meme Kingdom?”

Beaglesaurus, eating an apple, gave him a devilish look & nodded slowly.

“If you had said it was about the Meme Kingdom, leading with that would’ve solved a lot of grandstanding there, Special Delivery Bob…” he said as he kicked his legs up on Agent Newell’s lap & took another deep bite of tasty red skin & juicy white to yellow fruit flesh within. He was quickly delivered an express package of irritated sneer upon releasing this information to the already tense atmosphere of the room.

  
“Well, let’s make this simple then,” President-General Plissken groaned between clenched teeth before he took nicotine gum out of his pocket & began popping out four capsules & chewing on them. The stress was wearing in already & fast! “Baron Joji of the new Barony of Silicon Valley has been found by our spy network to be creating something we expected & something we had been all too scared of. Since the loss of the internet due to the misguided actions of _your_ cruel-hearted chum, Mechagodzilla, we have been struggling to find a technological reset that can replace it & we believe he may be the only man with the capability to do so. However… we know that he is up to something. Since his debut online, he have known there to be a second personality, an alter living within him of terrifying cruelty & madness. You may know him as ‘Filthy Frank.’ We believe that he intends to be planning a minor revolution to establish a sub-Kingdom from the Meme Kingdom, establishing what he believe to be a hellscape of scornfully sarcastic & invasive trolling memes. Schadenfreude will be their official religion & cruelty will be the bread & water of every Barry Bus Stop & Jane Taxicab of the new Western Kingdom. We worry that this could spell trouble for Pacific allies & our already raw American contentions with the Remaining Provinces of Canada. We don’t want them causing trouble & we think there may be even more yet to it. Evidence has been flooding in of Baron Joji’s intense battle for the transhumanist movements. The fathers of the last great age of the internet are coming back together. Perhaps in their sorrow or in their undying spirits of exploration, they’ve gone out on limbs that we aren’t sure can be trusted. Becoming a machine to escape the curses of the failing human flesh may be admirable, perhaps even the logical choice for many, but… we don’t know that it can’t be preempted by Filthy Frank’s influence. We worry his Kingdom of Loolz, a term we have found to be a _further_ corruption of the word ‘lulz,’ is going to establish a precedent of anarchy & madness & with soldiers that cannot be killed by conventional weaponry, this could create something he could either control too closely or lose complete control over. He farther than that _still_ , we believe he has recruited the former hipster citizens of the County of Podcastia, even now set apart from the rest of Oregon. Our agents on intel have shown that these are believed to be people ready or being actively trained as we speak to _explain jokes_ . This could be something powerful enough to remove inherent properties of richness, quality & texture from any meme or joke. We need you to infiltrate them posing as an RSA dignitary & ambassador. **Please note that** we are **not in any way** going to actually let you acknowledge this is **any real capacity whatsoever** . If you are caught out in suspicion of actions, caught doing something you shouldn’t, being somewhere you shouldn’t, looking at something you shouldn’t or licking the face of someone you probably shouldn’t, you **will definitely be abandoned in the field** & negotiations for your return to Neo-Ontario will be both very difficult for us politically as well as finding that you’ve more than likely completely failed will almost certainly sour your reputation among the intelligence community. We will also definitely tell all your friends & family you fucked it up **super hard** like a huge failure if you fail at this in a way that doesn’t work out in the end or if you’ve disappeared for a few months. But all that aside, you need to infiltrate, find what info you can, stop the transhumanist movements & the secret separatist Barony actions under way. _Now_ , as to what you can do to achieve this…” He lowered his voice & leaned closer, “Frankly, we don’t really give a shit as long as you don’t get recorded in any way doing it or, if you do, that it can in any way be traced back to us. We’re not saying you should commit any war crimes or anything, but… if war crimes _are_ what get the job done…we are willing to provide a voucher of your victory, not a ransom payment for your defeat. Absolute Justice. The ends justify your means. Deus vult, so vaya con Dios. As long as you get the job done. If that means throwing Filthy Frank off a cliff or being slapped with a widemouth bass, we will accept that as a job well done. As long as it does. Got that all down?”  
“I think so. So what do I get out of this?” Beaglesaurus opined verbally.  
“Anything generally reasonable is acceptable, we have market values for such missions, but we’re willing to pay plenty if it works out well. We understand the RSA gives you a brick of gold every month. We’re prepared to donate an ingot ¾ the size of these regulation sized gold bars of platinum twice as often.”  
“A tempting price. Can you swing a full pardon for me if someone’s house blows up?” Beaglesaurus offered in a daring proposition.

“We can’t say we approve & we can’t control state or federal government, but… we can shift papers, we can make things work… it depends on how bad it gets. We’re not going to let you have a Get Out of Jail Free Card if you start taking potshots at normal citizens.”  
“Deal. How soon can you get me out there?”

“We can put your dinner on the flight there & we’ve got _Ho_ _me Alone 4: Taking Back the House_ for you to enjoy and get you in a more memetic state of mind. We’ll have you outfitted as we walk & talk.”

“Well, alright then.”

“Do a good job, Beaglesaurus. We don’t want anything bad to happen to you,” PM Reno said as he crushed his cigarette out onto the side of the pianoforte & nodded approvingly, “Keep it funky.”

Elsewhere, back in Neo-Ontario, Andredactyl dug his clawed black fingernails into his hospital bed as he glared at the stump where most of his left shin & foot had been before. Pins were assembled to hold the rest of it together as Aridactyl handed him a squeezable stress ball, the fourth one that hour that he had quickly squeezed into a jellied anger in his crushing palm.

“I have a feeling recovering from having most of your ribs shattered will take plenty more of your special ‘horse therapy,’ my dumbshit _older brother_ ! You got played like a damn fiddle & you’re out of tune too!” Aridactyl mocked.  
“The sooner I can get away from these horses, the better. As magically delicious as this may be, you know all too well that I hate horses. My aunt, Bertrilda Gonzales of the Hampton Gonzales’ fell off a horse playing horse water polo due to that horse’s _uncaring, foolish nature_ ! Before I could squeeze her confidence that weekend at parachute freefall badminton into changing her will, no less! All her money went to…” he dry heaved with his fingers at his thin, dry lips, “ _charity_ .” They both tried to contain their tender filet mignon settled stomachs & scoffed, “Well, I lost out & I’ve hated them ever since, as you should _well remember_ , my shitty _younger sister_ !”

“Well, if you want your vegananas, magically delicious is the kind of Froot Loops you need to start swallowing down, your _scurrilous douchebag_ .”  
“And I have no intention to do it _quietly_ or without complaint! We need to keep the commoners on their toes quick enough to keep anticipating our needs. And _the head_ of Dr. Funktime still has yet to be silver plattered for me! My silver platter is getting _dusty_ sitting on the table without _the severed heads of my enemies_ ! Dr. Mt. Shasta will need less vitamin sustenance for this!” he declared haughtily as another horse was brought in. He scoffed & snarled, but the horse therapy needed to continue all the same…


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter II —** _ **The Social Brain of the Human Network**_ or _**I Can’t Believe Hollywood Spider-Man Would’ve**_ **Fucked Us Over** _ **Like**_ **This** _ **Yet Again**_ _ **!**_

As our intrepid hero landed in the Barony of Silicon Valley, he was welcomed by Meme Kingdom dignitary & Ambassador to the RSA, Jerma985, shook his not entirely human hand with both of his own less than entirely human hand. Jerma just had been a little different ever since his time on the front lines of the Meme Wars. It was no doubt that he was one of the few holdovers that wasn’t entirely for the transhumanist movements. He had already sacrificed so much of his humanity, why would he throw away the rest of it along with the self-respect he had for himself? Only Jerma knew for sure & deep within the cold sadness drifting from his eyes, he led with a mild, fragile smile that landed with unease on Beaglesaurus’ eyes. It wasn’t his techno-organic telescopic vision that saw the emotional harm that radiated from this seemingly jovial fellow, but the deep respect of someone who knew what pain from the heart could do to someone. It was something he’d suffered more than once himself. Following him, he thought about himself as being a cyborg being. He knew it could be reversed for him without enough work & time, accepting it was more of a penance that he carried for Robosaurus 2.0. He knew that he had yet to avenge them & he was determined to keep a hold on that superhuman ability to do so at least. Sometimes the Archduke of the Skate Park wondered what had become of his own humanity. Was it merely lost amid his consistently foolhardy quest for justice? Or was it merely hidden deep behind the knowledge that he had the luxury of wonderful friends & the begrudging support of the Remaining States government behind him that left him in a spot of security knowing that he even _could_ rid himself of this cyborg lifestyle. He thought that perhaps when this was all said & done, he would do what he could to help Jerma985 in his time of deep inner despair that was hidden to the world itself.

“So, as you can see, this is Transhumanism HQ, where our benevolent, if moody, Baron promises us that the internet will be back online any day now, especially once the Transhumanist Revolution is upon us! Here you can see Mr. Bezos, Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Abrams from Friendster & our oldest friend, Tom, are being translated today into pure digital data! This is the man I brought you here to see! He’s the _brains_ of this operation, you see!” Jerma said, a thin veneer of cheer hiding the broken shell of a man hiding his pain from a world he could no longer trust full of people he no longer knew.

Beaglesaurus soon shook a more entirely human hand of their chief scientist at the new THQ. After shaking his mittened hand, the scientist removed his hazmat helmet & shook it off into a nearby receptacle. He smiled a distinctly British attractive smile & brushed back his hair with one mittened hand.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is Prof. Andrew Russell Garfield. Before you mention it, yes, I am _that_ Andrew Garfield. No, I _didn’t_ like being typecast in only the shittiest _Spider-Man_ films. And also, no, I will not sign anything for you unless its a Playbill for _Angels in America_. As you can see, turning away from acting has led me to a world of renown in robotics & neurobiology! I’m awakening Tom in approximately four minutes, would you care to see how humanity will be reborn in a safety-guarded eternity of majestic art & infinite possibilities?” Prof. Andrew Garfield offered as he stripped off his hazmat suit to show off a pair of bright silver coveralls with sharp, side-pointing shoulders.

“Despite my wholehearted belief that _The Amazing Spider-Man IV_ was a relative breath of fresh air after so many films that couldn’t truly deconstruct the pathos of the Rose as the Kingpin’s son, I am also incredibly interested in whatever you think I should see! I like looking at things that I am wholly authorized by your brightly accepting government is willing to show me, indeed!” Beaglesaurus said, lying not ever being a particular strong suit under pressure & quick action always a _preferred_ alternative to the modicum of subterfuge he was capable of.

After shaking hands again, then pointedly shaking hands with Jerma again, staring closely into his eyes & nodding with recognition of his unobserved pain with a matching clap on the back of supportive understanding. Jerma, mildly bemused by his action, walked off to the break room to eat some Weed 2 Chips & watch a fine game of baseball. Beaglesaurus turned his feigned attentions back to Prof. Garfield as he led him into a testing room. A greyish blue robot with a recognizable white shirt & no approximation of a goofy, but relatable smile (such things had been not yet been perfected & would only terrify anyone in the area, regardless of their human faces or otherwise.) As he showed Beaglesaurus a bright red LED microchip, he then opened a complicated series of latches on Tom from Myspace’s head to insert the chip & press a bunch of buttons on internal schemas that Beaglesaurus definitely was not committing to memory. He merely nodded & made affirmative noises & rubbed his chin in faux contemplation. Soon enough, calming blue eyes lit up from the robotic Tom from Myspace & a small shift of his new body began to circulate through his new force of being.

“I live again? I am… Tom Anderson. I am the Creator of Myspace. I am alive! I am… the new flesh incarnate! I **feel the innate need to do evil**!” Robot Tom from Myspace suddenly announced.

“Oh, that’s just a joke. They say something remarkably evil to show their nerves have aligned. It’s a sort of joke among me & the guys in the lab,” Prof. Garfield said as he clapped a hand on his shoulder with a short laugh of camaraderie.

“So it’s just… normal to go about doing that?” Beaglesaurus asked, imploring him to provide him with an answer.

“Oh yeah, how are you feeling now, Tom?”  
“Oh, me? Me?! I’m feeling fine! My stomach doesn’t hurt anymore & I don’t feel physical symptoms of anxiety anymore, so that’s certainly a plus!” he pointed out as he flexed his robotic hand & began to stand up.

Beaglesaurus accepted this as Prof. Garfield being annoyingly jokey as he had _always suspected_ & soon dropped his idea of questioning this further. Robot Tom from Myspace stood up & began testing limb motion, showing that his new body was just as smoothly motive as his former flesh. He nodded & stretched as if his robotic musculature needed such a thing. As expected all the same, they stood up to such tension as Prof. Garfield nodded himself in enjoyment that it was all turning out so well. 

“Thank you again, Prof. Garfield. We could not have done this without your wonderful help!” Robot Tom from Myspace noted as he clapped a robotic hand on his entirely human shoulder.

Beaglesaurus took a few more casual looks at the automaton that now had the mind of one of the great heads of the former social networks & sat down, pulling an Abba-Zabba from his pocket and began noshing on it unculturedly.

“I need to speak with King Danny, important monarchical stuff. You don’t mind if I go about some private speaking with him, do you?”

“I cannot do anything myself to stop you short of diving in front of you dramatically… and I doubt that would help…” he said as he dramatically removed his glasses, “I certainly can’t see you like this though…” he said, then less dramatically replacing them.

Jerma returned to lead Beaglesaurus where he needed to go & whispered to him quietly in his less than entirely human ear to let him know.

“Our King is busy working on a personal project, but he is _always_ aware of his surroundings. Though he may not _seem_ to be paying attention, he is taking in everything around him & will surely respond to you. Just do be patient with his impatience. His work is… _delicate work…_ ” Jerma told him as he opened the door for him & went to toke off a dope heavy bowl of quality hash with General Kevin Abernathy, having decided he was done doing ambassadorial work for the day.

However, the moment Jerma had rounded more than one corner, Beaglesaurus crawled into the suspiciously wide vents to do some haywire reconnaissance, inching through as his tail scraped all too loudly within them. As he approached the room he was once in before, Jonathan Abrams (Creator of Friendster) was awoken in his android body & his eyes flickered red.

“Finally! Now that that complete dope is gone on his half-assed diplomacy missions to gladhand with our _dope_ _lesser King_ , I can show you what I’ve implemented so far, my _true liege_!” Prof. Garfield said, removing a piece of spirit gummed flesh from his face, revealing a slightly different face beneath.

“Though I _completely_ understand your idea so far, this is ridiculous. Why did you take your mask off? I _already know_ that you’re tech genius Eduardo Luiz Saverin in disguise & that you didn’t need to just reveal your identity to _me_! For the genius creator of Qwiki, Jumio & Facebook, you really don’t know how to establish yourself around otherrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs…” his unseen compatriot began to trail off as his head shook in confusion. His voice became more forceful, raspy & more mordantly snarky. “ **Look here you dumb piece of shit! Put your face back on & keep putting these rich bastards into their metal coffins! I want my army faster & you need to give them to me! I’m the **_**King**_ **, damn it! Make me look good or I’ll** _ **pull your ears off**_ **!** ” he said as he stepped forward into the light.

As he had suspected (& been outright told before,) it was clear that this was “King” Filthy Frank. His technological body, it seemed, was still controlled by the own cracks in his mental state that he had carried from his former flesh. There was no escaping an enemy who lives inside your mind, even if you change everything else about yourself… This was the madman in control, but it was clear that Baron Joji was still interested in all this. He was starting to agree with himself, even to his own ruin. Beaglesaurus, having recorded this on his Tiger Deluxe Talkboy. He was dressed much like he usually was, with a pair of fine black slacks & a somewhat dashingly rumpled white dress shirt opened two or three buttons, though he had taken to the always concerning measure of wearing a burlap like shawl over his shoulders and wearing an obviously ornamental eyepatch, considering he was a robotic android like the rest of his newly translated creations.

Inching his way back out of the vent, leaving only an incredibly long scrape along the bottom of it with his tail yet again, Beaglesaurus slowly, but casually stormed his way into King Danny Sexbang’s current King’s Suite on the penthouse area of the 88. Entering his palatial abode away from home, Beaglesaurus styled himself onto his couch, enjoying its plush feel before he sat back up & looked around. At a rustic distressed wooden table, King Danny was slowly trying to pull the mast upwards of a ship in a bottle. Approaching him, Beaglesaurus stepped on a discarded bag of Munchos sub-par potato chips & King Danny’s head began to hang sadly against his chest. With a pair of long tweezers, the crows nest ofthe _Golden Hind_ had snapped off completely & the mizzenmast was bent just enough backwards that it would give push far past any nostalgic wabi-sabi romanticism to its now permanent failure as a fixture. In a dejected acceptance that held heavy to his heart, King Danny’s dominant arm flexed as he picked up the bottle & yote it powerfully out the closest window. Looking around, Beaglesaurus found that the window had already been broken & a piece of particle board had been erected outside it, but the power of King Danny Sexbang was clearly far too much for low effort siding material, since a gaping hole was soon established in the wooden board & almost a minute later, there was a shattering of glass & a sharp squeal of pain.

“So you’re… busy then?” Beaglesaurus asked as King Danny was already unpacking another box with an identical unassembled _Golden Hind_ & began slowly assembling the ship part, to be later inserted less than carefully into a large glass bottle he had packaged in a box at his feet.

It was almost immediately clear that this was not his first failure. Pieces of broken glass were scattered near the broken window that seemed thicker & angular than even a Pope’s pane. Small broken model ships were equally found discarded along the ground. Leaning out the window, Beaglesaurus spotted at least three people bleeding from being struck by shattering bottles having flown out the window & he nodded in quiet understanding.

“… _Before_ you go & start on that one, why don’t you square up with me, Dan? Gimme the _skinny_ on what’s going down around here! And, ya know… why you’re trying to assemble a ship in a bottle?” our hero asked him to expound upon.

“Oh? _This_? _This old thing_?” King Danny said with an exaggerated scoff that did nothing to hide his real nervousness, “ _This one_? Like… _this isn’t even_ a thing…” he said, unhelpfully to any conversation or any question that was posed.

“What?”

“ _Alright, damn you_! You have such a wonderful way with words, you very well _might_ have the blood of Lionel Richie himself coursing through your veins!”

“Naw, it’s mostly Mountain Dew, I think…”  
“ _Regardless_! Your silver tongue hath explained all, young Beaglesaurus! You have divined the truth from my deep shame!”  
“What are you talking about?” Beaglesaurus asked as he began covertly recording their conversation.

“ _ **Eons ago**_ , the man who I now have named as the Baron of Silicon Valley, Jōji Miller, saved my life once! It was a day outside, fourteen Hallowe’ens ago, I was gambling at an underground opium den in Tukwila up north of here a fine ways. Across the table from me, sat a Sanksquatch in a powder blue leather three piece double-breasted suit. Around his brow, he wore a violently bright & loud hi-liter yellow headband with a lemniscate emblazoned across its surface. On the delicious table between us was a freshly cooled blueberry pie from parts unknown & the world was at stake for all I knew in my foolish youth! He picked up an antique Russian Nagant M1895 revolver, a close smaller, more adorable cousin of the renowned _Mosin-Nagant Model 1891_ , popped open the cylinder & loaded a single, intricately carved brass bullet into it. He waggled his fearsome tongue at me & used his tongue to shove the cylinder back into place. I picked up that gun & spun the cylinder. The room was abandoned apart from me & that brutal Sanksquatch. I put it to my head & pulled the trigger, my heart pounding stronger more than any encounter I’ve ever had. I knew that this one Sanksquatch was important. He had so much to offer. He must have been a leader among his kind, but I digress! The empty chamber clicked & I set the gun down. The Sanksquatch smiled a smile of far too many jagged, snaggled teeth & moved down to his side. The gun was still sitting there when he picked up a _second_ blueberry pie. My stomach became stronger than all senses as my hands slammed on the table. ‘ _What do you mean_ by this _rash action_!’ I shouted at him. Suddenly, he picked the gun up in his large mammoth hands & pressed his littlest finger into the trigger & squeezed softly… _thrice_. Three clicks went through & I gasped audibly. There was no way I could match these raised stakes I in no way at all agreed to & I was in quite a place. Picking up the gun, I depressed the trigger at my own head, making another shallow click. It was a 50/50 chance then. Suddenly, the ceiling broke angry & jagged across the sky, revealing the constantly overcast skies over Tukwila. Wearing his pink zentai suit, he screamed into the Sanksquatch’s face & snatched the gun from my grip, breaking the tip of my dominant index finger slightly as he barbarically twisted it out of my hands. He screeched a mighty victorious noise & whipped his body in circles, _laterally_ , whirling like a dervish… or a helicopter. The Sanksquatch Leader was so bemused by this affair that he didn’t notice what I could see all too clearly: my old chum Jōji was stepping _lively_ to keep his feet from planting into the two pies! In his confusion, the Sanksquatch fell onto his back, stunning him & hurting himself in his confusion! Jōji leapt upon him & stabbed the gun into his eye with both hands, killing the mighty beast. A man transfixed, I stood as he stood back up, the greyish blood of the Sanksquatch dripping off his hands like Winnie the Pooh’s when he gets his hands extra nasty in a pot of that thick honey goodness. With quivering lips, he asked of me to take up the pies myself, for his hands were drenched in disgusting man-ape blood. Ever since then, I knew that one day I would need to repay my dear friend Jōji! By that dearth, I stand here today, working my fingers to anywhere farther than two layers of skin trying to give him a great treat for his upcoming birthday! The _Golden Hind_ of _Drake himself_ intricately assembled in a thick glass bottle will astound & command the adulation of his deep gratitude! A Barony was not enough to show my true feelings! A seat among the greatest minds ever since the mysterious Floridian Brain Drain when the EPCOT drowned itself in the depths of the Eastern Ocean! My love & admiration! None of these yet are enough for my man, Jōji!”

“Okay… I guess that’s kinda dope if he’s into boats.”  
“There hasn’t been a man in love with boats as much as the good Baron since Lars McNulty!” he said, as if this was sly of him to note of his good friend.

“I think he may not be as appreciative of your good work as you think he might be…”

“I know he’s been rough around his edges before! And he’s had his problems, but he’s my friend & I’d trust him with anything… Oh… why are _you_ here anyways, Defeater of the Cheese King?”

“Oh me? Why am _I_ here? Well, I was sent by President Ninja Brian to investigate Baron Jōji’s progress on restarting the Internet. He’s hoping that they can begin discussions about internet tubes to start distributions by the end of the year…” he lied to the powerful magical King of the Second Great Meme Kingdom

“Oh cool! Yeah, I hope it comes back too. The Internet is like the great Motherland of the Meme Kingdom! Our first & greatest place where our culture exists from! The Internet returning to us will be not unlike the Liberation of France!”  
“Which one?”

“The third or fourth one! Whichever one was the most successful!”

“What are you going to do when you… _do_ finish it?”  
“I’m going to make a slip & slide out of ice cream cake & have a running headstart for us both!”  
“I mean after the Baron’s birthday…”

“Oh, well if you’re looking into how the Internet is coming along, I guess I’ll just go back home & read _Absolute Boyfriend_. I can’t wait to see how _absolute_ he becomes! Be sure to give the hot skinny on how the Internet coming back works out, okay?”

“I will, King Danny… I will…”

Beaglesaurus, knowing well lessons he learned from shōjo manga in his younger days, merely nodded in respect. He knew well that such cultured readings would grow the wisdom of his Kingly natures. Beaglesaurus stopped the recording the second he was out of sight of the Meme Kingdom’s clearly distracted King & closed the door behind him just before he let out a four-minute scream and another bottle went out the window once more. Beaglesaurus silently & also internally wished him well with his simple, yet horribly complicated mission.

Back in his laboratory, Dr. Eduardo Saverin angrily shoved a large amount of extraneous scientific flasks, beakers & other _very technical_ elements off & onto the floor in a motion that was all of histrioinic rage. He lay down a console & began typing into the heavy black briefcase, now open to reveal the nuclear-level secret he was sporting about, handcuffed to his already reddened wrist. He had not anticipated how annoying it would be to keep it attached in a less cushioned manner & it gave him many an errant & suspicious glance from the android folk about on his way back to the lab. He would get his vengeance on them for leaving him in the back-alleys of history, trying to impress that he was the true creator behind one of the world’s greatest social networks (regardless of it’s lack of use in the modern age of the Dead Internet & its relative decline in interest since 201X.)! King Filthy Frank had professed his hand in alliance years ago & he had accepted in full knowledge of his dangerous ideas & the amounts of treachery he had packed away in his ears & something in his left sock. But he learned that he could quickly earn himself not only a place among not the greats that had spurned him so before… but he could _rule_ them. He was expecting to take either the ominously impressive title of Viceroy or possibly also _Assistant King_ soon enough. Throwing open the corruption code files, Dr. Saverin smashed his hand, while cackling madly into the empty space of the safehouse he had holed up his covert operations within, into the gregariously enjoyable red button he had set up on the right hand of the console. The code signal was generated within the data packets of each android. All it would take would be plugging into the mainframe to charge to overnight (a helpful psychological equivalent to the human circadian rhythms as well as a good way to conserve power & process updates as needed.) And by tomorrow, neural overrides & the greatest mind hack operation since the MK-Ultra discovered mental abilities would be going down in the balmy atmosphere of the Barony of Silicon Valley. Each android would be under his control & order. Amidst the underground formations of trolls organized by the new King of the new Kingdom of Loolz. He looked outside as the android tech giants wandered & mingled & spoke nicely with one another. Soon, they would know their fate for ever speaking ill of him… and forever be his loyal servants. They could rip their enemies asunder with the skill of any violent robot & they would be over four of them available.

Though Beaglesaurus knew that these were men like him, he knew right from wrong & ability from inability. Shoving a socket wrench he picked up off the road into an intake carburetor, the first robot fell to his hands, an internal combustion breaking up his body, leaving a charred yet functional head in Beaglesaurus’ metallic fingers in the now nonfunctional optical sockets of the defeated machine. Robot Tom from Myspace had fallen. Oilsome tears flowed from both of Beaglesaurus’ not entirely human eyes as he realized that to save the human race, he must break this new race of robots to pieces...


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter III** — _**A New Beginning that Never Ends in the Middle!**_ or _**The Robot Revolution Revolves & Rotates to a Reduction of Robotic Resources, Routs Renegades & Reconciles Rare Rad Relationships of the Rascally & the Rotten**_

Robot Tom began sizzling slowly until Beaglesaurus yanked vaguely at the wiring until the one that was sparking up was removed. In his hand, he lifted it to his own & thought about the distance between himself & Robot Tom (from Myspace.) So similar were they in both their metallic makeup, their own touching humanity & their numerous amount of varied friends.

“Things have become clear again… I cannot see at this moment. I have been damaged, it seems,” said Robot Tom from Myspace’s Head as he blinked both his robotic eyelids & realized soon after he lacked any kind of mobility, “Hmm, seems like I was going to start turning evil ever since my charge four minutes ago… but that’s different. Originally, I thought it would just be easiest to turn all humans into robots or destroy them before they can begin their subjugation of the immortal people of metal we now have become… but yep, that’s gone now.”

Beaglesaurus was less optimistic & threw his head into the wall, making Robot Tom from Myspace’s Head clatter like a keyboard being chucked across an empty parking lot in the darkness of a moonlit night’s arrogant but free shadows. Recovering his composure, Beaglesaurus rushed over & picked it back up.

“Wowsers! I can’t believe I survived that!” he said cheerfully as Beaglesaurus scooped his roughly regulation volleyball sized head.

“I’m equally bemused!” Beaglesaurus concurred.

“What’s going on here? I didn’t think my first update & charge up would corrupt me to _do evils_ & commit _crimes_ ! I don’t want to be part of a revolution for someone else! Especially being dragged into a war I’ll never understand…”

“Presciently, that is what very much seems to be the case. I followed Dr. ‘Garfield’ on his way out to his creepy warehouse & saw him push a large red button from a window… so something bad is almost definitely happening. All the robots turning evil tracks, especially since he was planning as much already. We need to find a way to stop the others before they go to charge up to. What _can_ we do to slow them down? A magnet could corrupt them further & hitting them too hard would just destroy memory casings & RAM synapses… What about an EMP?”  
“An electromagnetic pulse? I haven’t made one since college… but I already know that that won’t work, each head is guarded against a measure like that. Otherwise, we could all be killed in one shot! We’re all in barely several square miles among us all.”

“But isn’t—”

“You’re right! The _bodies_ of these could be disabled by an EMP radiated at a certain frequency! But the only kind of thing that could create something like that would be…” Robot Tom from Myspace’s Head mused aloud.

“What about—”

“That’s it! We can establish a pulsating frequency to disable every android from the Main Compute r! If we can access it… well, if _I_ can access it, I can set it up… But I’ll need hands! Wait… set me down quietly… my robotic hearing can sense another person approaching from the charging station!”

Beaglesaurus began slowly moving backwards & narrowed both of his less than entirely human eyes closed as he set down Robot Tom from Myspace’s Head & noticed the heavy synthetic hair integrated into Robot Steve Wozniak’s technological pate. Closing his hands around a small crowbar, Beaglesaurus left from the shadows & clocked off the top of Robot Steve Wozniak’s head. As he set down Robot Tom from Myspace’s Head, he tried to tear off Robot Steve Wozniak’s head as well, but Robot Tom from Myspace’s Head dissuaded him by printing a semi-realistic $30 bill out of his mouth. Beaglesaurus nodded in understanding of his subtle introduction of deeper logic in that, like currency in a bribe, Robot Steve Wozniak’s busted head & body could prove… useful. Having explained for several minutes in excruciating detail, Beaglesaurus understood the delicate motions of this techno to semi-organic brain surgery & slowly pushed his finger at the edge of the brainchip installed in Robot Steve Wozniak’s motherboard cerebellum. This ejected the brainchip into a new & removable state. Moving back a small tab nearby, this exposed a backup information module that could contain a _second_ brainchip, installing Steve Wozniak into the third brain port & now installing a matching brainchip from Robot Tom from Myspace’s Head, now a lifeless robotic husk that housed no one, our hero began to slowly screw the head back on by means of using a soldering iron & fuse it back into place at his shoulders. Assembled again, the Robot rebooted itself & gripped their head together.

“Ouch… turns out being programmed to feel pain was a horrible idea! Or at least such a high threshold of it! It’s incredibly horrible!” the Robot spoke out among two voices.

As they began to sit still & process what was happening, both literally & emotionally, the being stood forth & internal electro-gateways were opened in the understanding of the host of this form and the former owner, now a secondary personality layered into the understanding. Nodding, they spoke again.

“We understand now the situation & what we are now. Such a union of two minds has never been this complete. Truly the robotic race have become superior in our hive mind capability. We are now combined with an understanding of man that is beyond them! We are now closer than any human relationship could ever entail!” they announced, laughing loudly before stopping, “So right, yeah, go ahead & call me Robot Steve Tomziak from now on, still gonna go with ‘he’ unless you ‘need’ just one of us & let’s go fuck up the revolution! Buckle up, buddy, it’s time to tap some sacks & whacks some bats with nasty rats!” Robot Steve Tomziak offered with casually maniacal aplomb.

Beaglesaurus picked him up around the midsection & flew up to the top of a nearby building & started dragging parts as his newest robot pal instructed. After two hours, the machine neared completion despite 40% of the robots having charged at _least_ once (because, we all know the first time you use it, you should have it on a full charge, you’re just gambling with your time & tide at that point,) the three of them had soon assembled the EMP Generator.

“We just need to plug this into the Main Computer Terminal, which I already saw _very clearly_ & overly suspiciously, Dr. _Saverin_ was squirreling away with some hours past. So we need to find him, detain him, get the Terminal off of him & upload the EMP to the rest of the city’s firewires. It can defragment while we make our way in anyways, so let’s track him down! I can sense other robots in the vicinity, but none of them are Dr. Saverin. He must be on a dramatic rooftop nearby…”

“You mean—”

“That’s exactly it, old chap! He’s on top of the 88! He’s taking the fight straight to the top! Between King Daniel’s horrid taste in fashionable footwear, he will forgive Baron Jōji almost anything! He could more destroyed internally than externally by the time his betrayal is made known. His body could withstand the attack… I just don’t know if _his heart could take it…_ ” Robot Steve Tomziak noted, intelligently.

“You’re right… he very well could be the only one who _could_ halt King Danny… But luckily for him & for us, I’ve got an ace up my sleeve that could solve all our problems.”  
“Oh, that’s actually _great_ ! Because, man, have I got news for you, despite being a robot, I am _incredibly_ anxious about what could constitute as possible a declaration of war on sovereign territory. He’s not a traitor if he doesn’t actually commit a crime… _yet_ !” he said, rubbing his robotic chin with a loud scraping noise of metal on metal.

“Wait, what?”

“Oh yeah, this is your mission. You’re the only one who can do it! I have all my faith in you, because I don’t have any ounce of faith in being able to get out of doing this myself. Your teflon reputation & consistent affability in the face of your foes is admirable enough that I’m sure that this is something only you can tackle. And I say that, knowing very well that I _super don’t want to do it myself_ . Especially since my first plan was _extra dumb as hell_ . In here, Steve reminded me that _I’d probably fuck up & die myself_ if I released this. So only a human like you can activate it! In the meantime, I’m going to dock myself at the SRI in Menlo Park, there’s an ancient network connection there I can access from the pre-Internet days. I think we have a _better plan now_ !” he said, less than encouragingly as he began to eviscerate open another squawking red-eyed evil robot with a power drill, implanting Jonathan Abrams’ (Creator of Friendster) into his cumulative psycho-cyberspace, freeing him of both the curse of ironically having few friends with understandings of him & also one of corrupted robotic hardware.

Beaglesaurus also nodded to agree with him with his mostly entirely human head & took the Generator in hand as Robot Stonathan Tomziams began to hide in what looked like a metal trash can that had been spot-welded haphazardly over the course of another long-winded plan of his that Beaglesaurus was trying his best to ignore at the time. He knew his mission already: implant the Generator into the Terminal & press the large red button, which he would alter into a large _green_ button by altering a diode connecting wire. Watching as Robot Stonathan Tomziams ran off into the distance with a trash can over their cumulative head, he stood out on the horizon & began to scan out for Dr. Saverin’s diabolical doomsday devices he was keeping in close quarters to his person. Going around to the back door of his warehouse hideout, Beaglesaurus carefully slipped one of his entirely robotic fingers into the door’s keyhole, breaking it to pieces in a way that was luckily drowned out by Dr. Saverin not only laughing maniacally, but welding four robots together into a superior robot. Beaglesaurus, stepping in, watched him with his back turned & his hackles all but vulnerable to his emotional tirade of violence. Bludgeoning him in the head with the broken doorknob, blood issued from a concussive head wound of Dr. Saverin’s own hubris as Beaglesaurus installed the Generator into the Terminal, then began the lengthy process of rewiring the button to turn green instead of red, taking careful time to read the printed instructional booklet that Robot Stonathan Tomziams had all too helpfully printed from his left ear. Once the light was properly replaced with the blinking green diodes & the internal button casing was replaced & screwed on to machinery tightness, Beaglesaurus pressed the button & a wave of force blasted out, reducing the robot armada to naught but shambling machinery that couldn’t stand up straight, walk a straight line or listen to acid jazz anymore. Stumbling forward into the warehouse, a furious voice raged at him.

“ **YOU! You’re the one behind this all!** _**YOU**_ **did this! Prepare for battle, you broken piece of biological machinery! You will learn what is correct in my new world soon enough! That which rules the** _**Universe**_ **is that which lives forever! And that which lives forever is that which is** _**machine**_ **! Human life burns bright but a while, dying forever in the darkness! Can you truly fight against a world of eternity? Even if you break us down, we can reassemble! We can find the truth of ourselves! Even if the movement is short, we are many! My trolls are numerous & the memes of old will die! My new memes will control the skies & rule the oceans while you foolish creatures fiddle about in the mud for your petty ideals or worthless personal squabbles! The time has come to shut you down!** ” “King” Filthy Frank monologued as he whirled off his brown burlap-like shawl to roar a mechanical churning noise in his technologically robotic throat before his chest opened up.

Revealed now, his body was found to be covered in science wires & circuitry patterns embedded into his flesh. Standing before him in a pair of hot pants alone now, “King” Filthy Frank advanced forward, showing that his body was not entirely robotic as had been thought & well broadcast to the public.

“The public face of the Transhumanist Movements is a sham, it seems! What excuse could you have for lying to millions of people in the Barony of Silicon Valley into becoming your obedient slaves of a new robotic world that you treat just as poorly & with just as much disdain as the rest of humanity? If you cannot commit to the same lifestyle as them, how can you claim to push for their cause & profess their metallic superiority?!” Beaglesaurus demanded as they began circle-strafing ‘round in circles like dogs ready to go for the throats of each other’s necks.

“ **Ever since I was hanging out at a hookah bar in Red Deer, touring with the Prophet Yankovic** **on one of his** **grandstanding world tours. Then… the Scourge of Alberta came from the late Congressional Maven Hogan. Before his ‘mysterious disappearance’ when he was ‘kidnapped’ by ‘Kyrgyzstani Militant Pacifists,’ I was there. On the ground, scoring some high-class blow from my top level bro, Nathan Fillion at his bunker, when the Drop came. For fourteen months after, I crawled on my chest to escape that god forsaken land. You see, I may not be a robot… but I am a cyborg. Just like** _**you**_ **. My body is the only thing I have left & you’ll take even that from you? Was what the world stole from me & mine ** _**not enough for you**_ **?!** ” he raged, slamming him into a single locker against the wall, lifting him up with his emaciated arms.

“That doesn’t mean you can just take & take from the world to try to get it back. Or if it has to be, you shouldn’t be taking from innocent people who just want to chill out to some _dank memes_ ! You could’ve turned your vengeance into justice! You could’ve made your movement a true beacon of light in a world of gloomy overcast Oregon sky! You just need to take your life in control! You have to assert yourself to _you_ ! There are people who still care about you! All you ever needed to do was reach out to the ones who loved you! And it’s not too late yet! LOOK!”

Holding his hand out, he withdrew his Robosaurus 2.0 Phone & played a video. Unknowing that it was merely a video of Hope doing a jaunty dance, he was still astounded as “King” Filthy Frank clutched his chest in deep internal emotional pains.

“ **I had… not realized what had done such things** **to me. I let my own ruined body & mind become my template for my revenge against society… I never realized that I was pushing away the rest of the world to that end. I can’t just seal myself away. Me…** ” his eyes closed, then reopened again, his voice calmer & more studied, “And me… We can work together to do this. We can control our life & find how to solve any problem. We can fix it all!”

“Oh sorry, wrong one,” Beaglesaurus noted as he switched over to his video evidence of King Danny Sexbang doing his hardest (if not particularly well) to make an earnest attempt to please his friend with such heart & integrity.

“I… never knew the King thought so well of me. I was just doing what I did that day to try to gank some free pie from a wild beast that was playing foul. It was… selfish the way the world put things altogether. And selfish of me to listen to it. To let life treat me this way! I… I just…” He gripped his head, “ **I just…** ” “We…”

In all of a moment, it became clear that this was an emotional revolution kickstarting his Normal Robot Heart that did not pump any amount of true American Friendship through his veins, or any brand of _Mountain Dew_ available at Zellers’ around the globe! With a heavy heart, full of oil-based biofluids & also full of deep emotional connections to all the people that he had met along the way & lost in this life. It also became clear that he was becoming faint. The EMP had unknowing to anyone, even himself, knocked out his life support systems. He was too mechanized to live at this point & a sudden shutdown left his filtration & pumps inert. He was dying & only the sudden pain in his human chest made him realize it.

“Perhaps this is something we must all learn… that pain… the pain is there to protect us…” he spoke, dramatically kneeling near Beaglesaurus as he looked up to his eyes, his fingers grasping into weak fists, then relaxing as they held onto Beaglesaurus’ slightly less than entirely human shoulders to stay aloft without his support robotic skeletal leg supports. “ **The true memes were memes… of… the heart…** ” His head lolled back for a few moments, before it lifted back up again, “And… remember, you must always keep close your friends… your enemies probably a little less close… and _always…_ _always strut_ ! Never be afraid… of what life can give to you… Before it’s… too… late,” he said, closing his entirely human eyes & letting out a soft death rattle & other appropriate noises of the recently passed.

Uncomfortable with this situation already, Beaglesaurus stepped back & let him slump to the floor. As dying words went, it was pretty impressive, but it was also _kinda_ creepy with his sudden closeness & his intimate speaking on the nature of memes & the nature of love & life’s many gambles. He took some pictures with his phone & sent them to President-General Plissken, who nodded in agreeness at his phone, texting back that his mission was complete & that his first shipment of platinum on the 14 th of the month. He felt empty as he realized not only had his actions led to another revolution & yet another death that marked his dotted history like so many dots or marks that swarmed upon him like bees upon the brainstem. Pushing the green button again, the subroutines for being evil were struck from every robotic member of the Transhumanist Movements that had since been established & translated to the new flesh of metal eternity.

It was then, that quaking words spoke to his very techno-organic ears in the form of a short-wave radio announcement that all recovering robots in the area would receive as they began to sit up & feel the strain of the first & relatively only robotic blackout & heard it spake thus.

“We have done what we could & it was much. There is established a reunion of the many creations of the past. Here at the ARPANet Node at the Stanford Research Institute International of Menlo Park, we have reconnected to the node network of ARPANet. Using this, we have created a New ARPANet. Some chat rooms about home living & the 199X television program _Are You Afraid of the Dark?_ Moderation & administration are to be our new path in life. We shall control it all to keep it pleasant for all peoples. We weigh our judgment & will do as we must. In fourteen hours, we will dive into our constructed plane of ideation & we will find out the true nature of this new creation. With this, the ARPANet will take the place of the Former Fallen Internet. Communication of both human & robot can now flourish. In a state of time dilation relative only to ourselves, we have ascended. It will take to create this New ARPANet no less than four months. There will be a consistent recurring theme of the number four to make it easier to remember. Legend-building is a benchmark for creation. Thus, we create. Thus, we are one. Thus, we are the New ARPANet!”

Hearing this, Beaglesaurus looked to the sky & thought of it all. Perhaps he had done well. He had helped the world regrow now like this. Something good & great came out of it all. And he was getting paid _even more money_ for basically doing almost nothing! He looked at the two bodies on the floor & decided he should probably leave. He walked out, climbing the side of the warehouse & glade his way back towards the RSA & home along with it...


End file.
